Oral Answers to Questions

FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH AFFAIRS

The Secretary of State was asked—

Israel

Angela Watkinson: What discussions he has had with his counterparts in the European Union regarding the recent violence in Israel.

Bill Rammell: May I first pass on the Foreign Secretary's apologies for not being here today, as he is in Washington? I know that he has passed those on to you, Mr. Speaker, to the shadow Foreign Secretary and to the hon. Member for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale (Mr. Moore), who is leading for the Liberal Democrats today.
	The Foreign Secretary has had recent discussions with a number of European colleagues on recent events in Israel and the occupied territories, and will hold further talks at the General Affairs and External Relations Council on 31 January. We and our European colleagues continue to condemn all violence and urge appropriate restraint by all parties.

Angela Watkinson: The recent election of Abu Mazen in Palestine and the willingness of Israel to co-operate give us the best opportunity that we have had for a long time to break the dreadful cycle of suicide attacks and reprisals. May I urge the Minister to redouble his discussions with the European Union to take best advantage of the situation, so that we can make progress before any more atrocities take place and that good will is lost?

Bill Rammell: I wholly agree with the hon. Lady that we have a real opportunity. There is still too much death and hardship on both sides, but the election with a strong majority of Mr. Abu Mazen, who has a clear and unambiguous commitment against violence, is a positive step forward. We are looking forward to his visit here on 1 March so that we can show our political support for reform in the Palestinian Authority and take the process forward.

David Cairns: In 2004 alone, 232 Qassam rockets were fired from the Gaza strip into Israel, and there were 18 such attacks in the first two weeks of this year. Given Abu Mazen's recent welcome announcement on cracking down on terrorism in the Gaza strip, what help and assistance can the EU give to increase the security capacity of the Palestinian Authority, with specific reference to stopping the rockets being smuggled into Gaza through Egypt in the first place?

Bill Rammell: My hon. Friend highlights a key concern. It is critical that the Palestinian Authority make it abundantly clear that it will step up its security efforts to tackle the challenge. We are doing everything that we can through aid and training to bolster and support the Palestinian Authority. A real effort in tackling terrorism at the same time as the Israeli Government are making efforts to ensure that they act proportionately and with due regard for civilian life, although we recognise their right to defend themselves, provide us with the best opportunity to move forward.

David Tredinnick: Does the hon. Gentleman recall that much equipment sent by the European Union over the past two or three years has been destroyed during incursions by Israelis into the west bank, for whatever reason? That has included computer, air traffic control and hospital equipment. Has he held discussions with his European counterparts about replacing that equipment, and if so, when does he expect replacements to be delivered?

Bill Rammell: The contributions that both we and the European Union are making to bolster the security effort of the Palestinian Authority are ongoing, and we maintain that commitment. I appreciate what the hon. Gentleman says, and such actions have been regrettable. Nevertheless, there are still significant resources in the Palestinian Authority, especially manpower, and it is crucial for it to use that, with our support, to tackle terrorism and beef up its security efforts.

Louise Ellman: What action will be taken against Iran and Syria, which continue to back attacks on Israeli citizens, such as the rocket attack that killed a teenager in Sederot in Israel last week?

Bill Rammell: We have consistently urged all neighbours in the region to desist from supporting terrorist attacks, and we will continue to make that abundantly clear. Both sides must make a real effort to tackle terrorism. The statements made thus far by Mr. Abu Mazen present a real opportunity, so it is crucial to take that forward.

Ukraine

Mark Lazarowicz: What meetings he has had with representatives of Ukraine since the recent presidential elections.

Denis MacShane: I represented the United Kingdom at the inauguration of President Yushchenko in Kiev last Sunday and had talks with senior officials who are expected to take up ministerial posts. I expressed our Government's support for the ambitious programme of President Yushchenko to develop Ukraine as a European democratic market economy under the rule of law.

Mark Lazarowicz: A Vice-President of the European Commission was reported yesterday as saying that the idea of Ukraine's future membership of the EU was "realistic". Does my hon. Friend agree with that assessment?

Denis MacShane: In broad terms—but let me quote President Yushchenko himself. In his policy statement, "The European choice for Ukraine", he said:
	"We are realists: Ukraine's membership in the EU is not a question for today."
	Yesterday, Javier Solana published an ambitious 10-point programme on how the EU can help Ukraine. I welcome the fact that Ukraine has chosen to direct its future towards Europe and developing European norms of a market economy, the rule of law, respect for human rights and cleaning up corruption. I only wish that more Members of this House were as enthusiastic about the EU.

Francis Maude: Of course Ukraine's membership of the EU is not a matter for today, for tomorrow or for next year. Does the Minister recognise that Ukraine has been through an incredibly fraught period since the end of the Soviet Union? Now, it has made the difficult decision to lock itself into the path of the rule of law and market reform, as he says, and President Yushchenko deserves huge support in his efforts to accomplish that. Ukraine's directing itself toward eventual membership of the EU is very much in its interest and ours, and I hope that there will be no diplomatic timidity about encouraging that.

Denis MacShane: There is certainly no diplomatic timidity on my part. I entirely agree with the right hon. Gentleman's comments—he is right. I said all that on the record yesterday in Kiev. Regrettably, my support for Ukraine's European ambitions did not get the wide front-page coverage that I might have hoped for—but we live for the next day. I encourage all hon. Members with an interest in Ukraine to travel there; I want more tourism and more trade contacts with that country. Let us not underestimate the democratic revolution that occurred between mid-November and the inauguration on Sunday: to see hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians demanding a new country was a marvellous moment in European history, and we should celebrate it. I hope that Britain will be a strong friend of Ukraine in the coming years.

Patrick Cormack: Few people would accuse the hon. Gentleman of ever being timid—or often being diplomatic. Does he agree that Ukraine has every bit as much right as Turkey to count itself a European nation?

Denis MacShane: Quite so—I leave diplomacy to diplomats. The Government have clearly expressed their support for Ukraine as an entirely European country, and for Kiev's position as one of the cradle cities of European civilisation. I hope that in the coming years, Britain will continue to give Ukraine every possible assistance in realising its European ambitions.

Afghanistan

Andrew MacKay: if he will make a statement on his Department's assistance to Afghanistan.

Bill Rammell: The Foreign and Commonwealth Office has consistently provided a high level of assistance to Afghanistan since late 2001. That includes financial and political support to President Karzai's Government and the election process, to counter-narcotics efforts and to reform of the Afghan security sector.

Andrew MacKay: Does the Minister accept that, with the welcome election of President Karzai, much more needs to be done? Does he share my criticism of some of our NATO allies who, unlike ourselves, have done very little to offer support and assistance? What will he and the Foreign Secretary do through NATO to put pressure on the recalcitrant states and name and shame them?

Bill Rammell: First, it is important to recognise the real progress that has been made in Afghanistan. I attended President Karzai's inauguration just before Christmas. The first nationwide democratic election is a huge step forward and 3 million refugees have returned to the country, but we need to maintain our assistance and support. I agree that NATO should do more. The recent force generation conference noted some welcome progress—the United States, Italy and Lithuania made some additional contributions—but we need more. I recently spoke at the NATO Council urging NATO to do more, especially on the counter-narcotics front. We shall continue to make that argument.

Joan Ruddock: May I take this opportunity belatedly to welcome the publication of "Inclusive Government: Mainstreaming gender into Foreign Policy" and to thank my hon. Friend for the fact that there is a gender strategy in Afghanistan? How are the British Government using that strategy to support women in the forthcoming elections?

Bill Rammell: I pay tribute to my hon. Friend, who ever since the demise of the Taliban has consistently argued for women's rights in Afghanistan. There has been a dramatic improvement. In the recent presidential election, a woman stood for the presidency and three for the vice-presidency, and 25 per cent. of the seats in the lower house are reserved for women; those are important steps forward. However, as we move towards the parliamentary elections, we need to continue to support women. We, the European Union and our other partners are determined to undertake that task.

Adrian Bailey: Does my hon. Friend agree that crucial to the future of Afghanistan is the provision of alternatives to the poppy cultivation there? Will he outline what steps we and other countries have taken to achieve this?

Bill Rammell: I thank my hon. Friend for that question. To tackle narcotics in Afghanistan we need what we have, which is a multi-faceted strategy including eradication, interdiction and the spread of the criminal justice system. If we are genuinely to move farmers away from the poppy, we need to provide alternative livelihoods. The Department for International Development has recently increased its commitment to £30 mllion over three years, and £13 million of that is now being spent on local community development councils in 5,000 villages, focusing on the bare basics of water pumps, irrigation channels, bridges and roads, which is the first step. We certainly need to take that effort forward.

Eritrea/Ethiopia

Laurence Robertson: what recent discussions he has had with the Government of Eritrea about the boundary dispute with Ethiopia; and if he will make a statement.

Chris Mullin: We discuss the border dispute with Eritrea, Ethiopia and other interested parties on a regular basis. I had a long discussion on the subject with Eritrean President Isaias in Asmara in January last year, and with Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles in Addis Ababa on 26 October. I hope to be able to discuss the matter again with representatives of both Governments at the African Union summit in Abuja this weekend.

Laurence Robertson: I thank the Minister for that response. At a meeting with the Prime Minister of Ethiopia in November, he affirmed his commitment to a peaceful solution with Eritrea and, indeed, wanted to accept what he did not like in terms of the border dispute—he accepted the ruling of the boundary commission. Indeed, in November the Parliament of Ethiopia passed a motion to that effect. Recently, however, Ethiopia has been expressing deep concern about the attitude of Eritrea towards the boundary solution. There is concern that that country, which is not democratic and does not have a free press, might seek to return to war. That would, of course, cause devastation in the area, loss of life and loss of aid. Will the Minister redouble his efforts to discuss the situation, particularly with Eritrea, with a view to persuading that country that the peaceful way forward has to be the only way forward?

Chris Mullin: I take a close personal interest in the border dispute, having been engaged with it, one way or another, for about the past 18 months. Our assessment is that neither side wants a return to war, but it is correct to say that there is always a danger that a small spark on the border will reignite the conflict. Our approach is based on three principles: no return to war; that the findings of the boundary commission are binding; and that dialogue between the two parties must take place. Professor Lauterpacht, who was the chairman of the Eritrea-Ethiopia boundary commission, has said that any issue can be discussed, provided that both parties agree. We think that that should happen, and that is the view that we are making clear to all parties, including the Eritreans.

David Taylor: With the deterioration of the situation in Eritrea, are not the Government there beating the drums of war as a diversionary tactic to draw attention away from their numerous failings, and to strengthen their own position? Will my hon. Friend commit himself, when we next meet the representatives of either Eritrea or Ethiopia, to pursue the question with Ethiopia, whose attitude to the Eritrea-Ethiopia boundary commission's final recommendations is not entirely unambiguous? Indeed, it is already entering qualifications. The removal of those would defuse the tension, would it not?

Chris Mullin: A settlement of this dispute will require both sides to move. We welcome the recent movement by the Ethiopians, which we had been urging upon them. In due course they may have to make some further concessions. At the moment it would be welcome to have some sign from Eritrea that it is willing to engage in discussions. So far there have been no such signs from Eritrea.

Iraq

Andrew Selous: What assessment he has made of the conclusions of the Iraq survey group.

Douglas Alexander: The Government have read the conclusions of the Iraq survey group carefully. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has publicly accepted its principal conclusion that Saddam Hussein's regime did not possess stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.

Andrew Selous: The Joint Intelligence Committee warned the Government that the limitations of its intelligence on weapons of mass destruction were not made sufficiently clear. Does that not mean that any future threats to the UK under this Administration may not be treated by Parliament and the public with the seriousness that they deserve?

Douglas Alexander: I do not accept that. Since May 2003 there have been four inquiries—by the Intelligence and Security Committee, the Foreign Affairs Committee, Lord Hutton and Lord Butler. A central question, of course, for those inquiries was whether the Government had in any way acted improperly or dishonestly in using the intelligence available to them. All four inquiries concluded that such allegations were unfounded.

Malcolm Savidge: Are Britain's arguments against further military adventures strengthened by the fact that Bush's Iraq survey group not only failed to find any weapons of mass destruction but could only speculate on Saddam's future intentions on the basis of his perceived need to deter Iran and Israel? Surely, that proves that the imminent WMD threat to the United States, which the Bush Administration used to justify war, was absolute fantasy?

Douglas Alexander: The report is extensive; if I recollect correctly, it is more than 800 pages long. Its central conclusions included the fact that Saddam never abandoned his intentions to resume a chemical weapons effort, and indeed was pursuing an aggressive strategy of subverting the UN sanctions and the oil-for-food programme. The report therefore comes to a range of conclusions, and I do not accept the point made by my hon. Friend. Frankly, the issue has been well ventilated in the House on a number of occasions.

Elfyn Llwyd: In the light of the survey group's findings, does the Minister agree that Hans Blix was right to ask for more time? Does he not agree that if Dr. Blix's pleas had been heeded, conflict could have been avoided?

Douglas Alexander: Dr. Blix's views on this issue are clearly important. As the executive secretary of UNMOVIC, mandated under United Nations Security Council resolution 1284, he was shown a draft of the Government's September 2002 dossier and commented that he felt that some sections of it understated Iraq's capabilities. It is too often forgotten by people who disagreed with the Government's action that UN resolution 1441 was adopted unanimously by all members of the Security Council.

Tam Dalyell: On what date was the British Government first consulted by the Americans about the winding up of the survey group?

Douglas Alexander: In relation to what my hon. Friend describes as the winding up of the survey group, it is the case that it continues to undertake work inside Iraq. It is certainly the case that Charles Duelfer has returned to the United States. None the less, the group continues to work closely with the multinational force.

Michael Ancram: Given the Iraq survey group's failure to find any weapons of mass destruction, and the Prime Minister's persistent assertions when questioned on WMD that we should await the outcome of the survey, when will the Government report to the House why the Prime Minister, in his insistence that weapons of mass destruction existed, got it so wrong?

Douglas Alexander: It is of course the case that people have made criticisms of the Government's action, but they can hardly include in that a failure by the House to discuss the issue. Quite reasonably, as I said, we have had four inquiries looking into the matter. The House has had the opportunity to discuss the issue on numerous occasions, and there is little that can be added to the extensive debates that it has already had on the subject.

Claire Curtis-Thomas: Does my hon. Friend agree that although people are seeking, and have sought, weapons of mass destruction, Iraq's capability to produce those weapons was unquestionable? Moreover, it had demonstrated its capacity to use them extensively in northern Kurdistan. It retained that capability until the invasion of Iraq, which sought to reduce the problem completely and for ever.

Douglas Alexander: I concur with my hon. Friend. No other country in modern times has used chemical weapons against both its neighbours and its own civilian population. That is an important corrective to some of the arguments that we have heard in the House in recent months. It is important to recognise that whatever the divisions in the House—which were present at the time the action was taken—there is now common ground across the House about the need to support the efforts of the Iraqi people as they look ahead to the democratic elections at the end of the week

Hugh Robertson: As the Minister said, the Iraq survey group report highlighted the link between corruption at the UN during the oil-for-food scandal and the current security situation in Iraq. Does the Foreign Office believe that responsibility for that scandal rests inside the UN itself, owing to a lack of accountability and transparency, or with the countries of the Security Council, who knew that it was going on but failed to take any action?

Douglas Alexander: That is an important question, which is why we have supported fully the decision to set up a high-level inquiry within the United Nations. We fully support Paul Volcker in his efforts. It would be injudicious for me to comment on specific allegations while that inquiry continues, but I can assure the House that the Government continue to co-operate fully with the inquiry as it moves forward.

Nigeria

Bill Tynan: What recent discussions he has had with the Government of Nigeria on the situation in the Niger delta.

Chris Mullin: I am going to the Niger delta later this week to see the problems at first hand. I look forward to reporting back to the House in due course.

Bill Tynan: My hon. Friend's visit to the Niger delta is very welcome. Non-governmental organisations in particular welcome the fact that he is going to Nigeria and will pay special attention to the Niger delta. Amnesty International and Nigerian groups have reported that 600 people have been killed in the area, and tens of thousands displaced. Will my hon. Friend press the Nigerian Government to put an end to the conflict in the Niger delta by disarming the gangs roaming there and causing untold misery for the population?

Chris Mullin: Yes, I accept that there are serious problems in the Niger delta, of which criminal violence is one. Neglect of the non-oil economy is another. There are extremely high levels of unemployment, which gives rise to the fact that large number of youths engage in violence. There is endemic corruption and large-scale theft of crude oil—up to 100,000 barrels a day are disappearing. There is also environmental degradation and a proliferation of weapons. All those problems need to be addressed, and we are encouraging the Nigerian Government to do that.

John Robertson: What about the gangs that my hon. Friend the Member for Hamilton, South (Mr. Tynan) mentioned? Does the Minister agree that they pose a threat to the oil industry in the area, and to British companies? What are the Government doing to protect British companies?

Chris Mullin: The gangs certainly pose a threat, not just to British companies but to all proper activity in the Niger delta. We are working with the Nigerian Government to try to improve the situation in the delta, which includes providing technical advice. But it is primarily a matter for the Nigerian Government to assert control over the delta, and we judge that they are capable of doing so. What is necessary is to find the political will.

Middle East Peace Process

Andrew Dismore: If he will make a statement on the implications of the Palestinian elections for the Middle East peace process.

Bill Rammell: We welcome the success of the recent Palestinian presidential elections, and congratulate President Abu Mazen. We hope that his victory with a strong majority will provide an opportunity to move the middle east peace process forward. We look forward to welcoming the new Palestinian leadership to London on 1 March. We are committed to helping them build the institutions that are needed to underpin a future viable Palestinian state.

Andrew Dismore: Given the commitment of Abu Mazen to end the intifada and return to the road map, which requires an end to terrorism and the reform of the Palestinian Authority security services, will my hon. Friend say what progress has been made towards a ceasefire by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, among others? Although the deployment of PA security forces in Gaza is welcome, will he confirm reports that PA Gaza security head, General Saeb el-Ajez, has said that his forces will not arrest terrorists?

Bill Rammell: I am not aware of that specific report, but I will contact my hon. Friend about it. Abu Mazen's credentials and commitment to tackling terrorism are clear and unambiguous. That gives us an opportunity. Part of the way in which he looks to deal with the security situation is to reduce the capacity and will of those who espouse violence. If he believes that he can do that through political dialogue, that should be welcomed.

Michael Moore: The Liberal Democrats also welcome the success of the Palestinian elections and wish President Abbas every success for the future, not least in his early serious efforts to improve the security situation in the Gaza strip. The peace process outlined in the road map is now at least two years behind schedule. Does the Minister see recent Palestinian developments as a positive step forward? How does he expect the Israeli Government to respond?

Bill Rammell: As I said earlier, I think that there is a real opportunity with the election of Abu Mazen. We are doing everything we possibly can to take that opportunity to help the process forwards. On the subject of the conference that we are calling here for 1 March, I was talking this morning to my noble Friend Baroness Symons, who has been travelling in the middle east in the past week, and she informed me that that initiative has been widely welcomed there. We will continue to undertake that commitment, while at the same time making it clear that the road map remains the best way forward for the peace process. There are commitments on both sides that need to be fulfilled, and we urge that that should happen as quickly as possible.

Brian Iddon: As an election observer, I can tell my hon. Friend that the elections went very well throughout the west bank, with the possible exception of Jerusalem, where there were immense problems. Is he aware, however, that the Israeli Government decided last summer to invoke the 1950 Israeli absentee property law to confiscate more property that Palestinians own in east Jerusalem? What hope is there for peace when the Knesset provokes the Palestinians in such a way?

Bill Rammell: There are faults on both sides, and actions in accordance with the road map that need to be undertaken by both sides. One of the key commitments under the road map is for the Israeli Government to freeze settlement activity. It is important that they are cognisant of that and take those actions forward, and we will continue to press them to do so.

Martin Smyth: I join others in welcoming President Abbas, but does the Minister agree that in a week when we are thinking of the holocaust, it is important that the states around Israel recognise its right to exist, and encourage it and the Palestinians to come to better terms?

Bill Rammell: The 60th anniversary of the holocaust is a very significant event, and should be an opportunity for us all to make clear our opposition to anti-Semitism and racism in all its forms. That should be a clear message, but on the second part of the hon. Gentleman's question, we have consistently made it clear to regional neighbours that they need to do everything possible to stop support for terrorism. What is abundantly needed is an acceptance of the right of the state of Israel to exist, while we rightly continue to push for a viable Palestinian state.

Anne Campbell: I, too, was privileged to be one of the thousands of international observers who travelled to the west bank for the Palestinian elections. Under the gaze of those international observers, the Israeli army considerably eased the restrictions on Palestinians passing through the checkpoints. Does my hon. Friend agree that the presence of international observers could have a huge impact on the way in which the Palestinians are allowed to travel around the west bank, and so engender a much better atmosphere for peace?

Bill Rammell: May I first—I should have done so previously in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, South-East (Dr. Iddon)—thank the observers for the efforts that they made in observing those important elections? That was a crucial part of ensuring not only free and fair elections, but a very high turnout. The point that my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Mrs. Campbell) makes about the general importance of international observers is crucial in ensuring that the conditions needed to underpin the road map are taken forward. That is an argument that we will continue to press.

Mark Simmonds: The Opposition join other hon. Members in congratulating the Palestinians on their successful elections and Abu Mazen on his decisive victory. We all hope that that will contribute to a lasting peace settlement in the middle east and facilitate the two-state solution. What specific steps are the British Government taking to assist the new Palestinian President and the Palestinian Authority to suppress terrorist activities and improve Palestinian security, thereby establishing calm and the atmosphere for constructive dialogue and negotiations with Israel, including a peaceful and orderly Israeli withdrawal from Gaza?

Bill Rammell: I thank the hon. Gentleman for that question. It is clear that, with this Government's lead and the Prime Minister's personal commitment, we are taking a significant lead to support Abu Mazen and the Palestinian Authority. We are doing that in political terms with the meeting that is taking place here on 1 March, but we are also doing it in practical terms, through the Department for International Development and through advice and funding support. We will continue to do that, and if those efforts are made and there is an increased focus on the part of the Palestinian Authority on improving its security performance, we will be better able to urge the Israeli Government to move forward with their commitment to the disengagement plan as a first step along the road to fulfilling the objectives of the road map.

Iraq

John Mann: What action he is taking in conjunction with allies of the UK and the Iraqi Interim Government to protect Iraqi trade unionists.

Douglas Alexander: The transitional administrative law makes specific provision for the right of all Iraqis to join trade unions, and at least 12 national trade unions have already been established. We follow closely trade union issues in Iraq and are working with the TUC and other trade union organisations to support Iraqi trade unions.

John Mann: We have seen beatings, kidnappings, mortar attacks on the Transport and Communications Workers Union headquarters and the torture and murder of Hadi Saleh, one of the trade union leaders. What are the Government doing to let the British people know about the magnificent efforts of Iraqi trade unionists—not least the rail workers of Basra, who are striking against the terrorists—and Iraqi trade unions in the battle for democracy in Iraq?

Douglas Alexander: I pay tribute to my hon. Friend's work in publicising such issues, and we condemn without reservation the atrocities that he has described. Only this morning, our ambassador in Baghdad gave an interview in which he made clear both our determination to continue to support the people of Iraq as they move through this difficult period immediately prior to the elections, and the scale and significance of what is at stake in Iraq. There is a clear choice between civil society, which my hon. Friend has described, with all the people of Iraq being given a true say in the future of their country, and a group of terrorists who are determined to deny them that opportunity.

Alice Mahon: I am deeply saddened by the recent torture and death of the well known trade unionist. Is not the truth, however, that the interim Government take their orders from America? We should all deplore the carnage in Falluja and the fact that this unnecessary war has claimed 100,000 victims. A support group has grown up around the Prime Minister, and it has singled out trade unionists as victims, which does the anti-war movement no good. Would it not be better to set a timetable to withdraw troops from Iraq and let the Iraqi people rule themselves after the election?

Douglas Alexander: Any deaths are to be regretted, but Prime Minister Allawi made a clear statement on Falluja: the insurgents were given the opportunity to lay down their arms and take part in the democratic elections. It is, of course, a matter for regret that the insurgents chose not to do so, but they should not be able to deny the Iraqi people the very civil rights that the prospect of democracy offers them.

Harry Barnes: I had the privilege of meeting the late Hadi Saleh, the former international secretary of the Iraqi Federation of Workers Trade Unions, when he came to the House and I chaired a meeting that he addressed. During his hideous murder, lists of members of the IFTU were stolen from his home by terrorists. What can be done to allow trade unions to exercise security over information so that they are not dealt with in that way?

Douglas Alexander: I pay tribute to my hon. Friend's long-standing interest and work on behalf not only of trade unions in Iraq but of the people of Iraq. The United Kingdom, working as part of the multinational force, will stand with the Iraqi people and work closely with the interim Government to try to implement the necessary security measures to defend the Iraqi people against the insurgency. We are, of course, concerned about trade unionists, but we are concerned about all the people of Iraq, which is why we shall continue to work hard in the coming days to make sure that security is in place to allow them to have their say in free and fair elections.

Democratic Republic of the Congo

Bob Blizzard: If he will make a statement on the situation in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Chris Mullin: The situation in the eastern DRC remains unstable, although fighting recently seems to have subsided. However, human rights abuses continue and the humanitarian situation remains critical for many displaced civilians. The UK is pressing all sides to calm the situation.

Bob Blizzard: As my hon. Friend knows, some 3 million to 3.5 million people have been killed in that part of Africa in the past five or six years alone, which is, in a continent of disasters, perhaps the greatest disaster of all. As we rightly make Africa the priority in our chairmanship of the G8, we should urge the international community to focus on that particular part of Africa, support the work of the United Nations and do everything we can to bring international pressure to bear to achieve a political solution. We should also use our relationship with Rwanda to urge it to keep its troops out of the DRC and to play a more constructive role in bringing peace to that country.

Chris Mullin: We keep in close touch with Rwanda regarding its activities in the eastern DRC. There is no hard evidence of Rwandan troops having been there recently. As regards the international community, we and our main allies are well aware of the Congo's central significance to stability in Africa, and my hon. Friend is right to draw attention to the scale of the catastrophe that has occurred there. MONUC—the United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo—has recently been strengthened and is the largest United Nations mission anywhere in the world. The international community is making a major effort because, like my hon. Friend, we recognise the possibilities there. It does, however, require political will on both sides of the argument, and that cannot necessarily be supplied by the international community. Nevertheless, we can encourage, and we do. We can also discourage people on the ground from doing bad things, and we do that too. The most important priorities in the Congo are these: first, to start to integrate the army and the various armed bands that exist there into a unified army and stop them preying on their own people; and secondly, to make progress towards an election, which is scheduled for June.

Maldives

David Amess: What recent discussions he has had with the British high commissioner of the Maldives on the political situation in the Maldives.

Douglas Alexander: I spoke to the British high commissioner yesterday to receive an update on the elections. The final results have not yet been announced because of a delay in polling on one of the islands. They are expected on Wednesday 26 January.

David Amess: Does the Minister have concerns about the allegations of irregularities regarding those elections? It seems a little strange not to allow political parties. Will our Government do everything they can to assist the incoming Government with reconstruction, particularly as regards the tourism industry?

Douglas Alexander: Yes, we are concerned to assist the people of the Maldives as they try to respond to the terrible tsunami that affected that part of the world on 26 December. We are aware of the allegations of vote rigging and intimidation during the elections. That is why we await the outcome of the work being done on these matters by the Commonwealth Secretariat and by SAARC—the South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation. I look forward to sharing that information in due course if it would be helpful.

Turkey

Ben Chapman: If he will make a statement on the application by Turkey for membership of the European Union.

Denis MacShane: The Government strongly support Turkey's bid to join the EU. A stable, democratic and prosperous Turkey anchored in the EU would be a powerful demonstration that Islam, democracy and economic success are compatible. The Government therefore welcome the European Council's decision in December to open accession negotiations on 3 October this year.

Ben Chapman: Does my hon. Friend accept that for the cultured Turkish nation, entry to Europe has effectively been work in progress since the time of Ataturk, and that accession is as important to existing members as it is to Turkey itself? However, does he also agree that taking that forward means finding a solution to the Cyprus issue? Does he recognise that the Turkish northern Cypriots, who voted for the Annan plan, find themselves in isolation as regards trade, sporting links and direct flights, while the Greek Cypriots, who voted against the plan, have full membership of the European Union? Will he ensure that the Turkish northern Cypriots get a fair deal as matters move forward?

Denis MacShane: My hon. Friend is right to set the matter in a broader context, and I recommend to all hon. Members a visit to the Royal Academy to see the wonderful exhibition on the roots of Turkish culture. My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to the plight of the inhabitants of northern Cyprus, principally the Turkish Cypriot community there. I have urged the Government of the Republic of Cyprus—the only Government of that republic when it was involved with Turkey in the events of 1974—to accept that the time has come to allow all Cypriots to trade 360° around the compass. My hon. Friend is also right to say that normalisation and the resolution of the Cypriot question remains an important issue on the agenda. The Government hope that Ankara will take the necessary steps to find some solution as soon as possible.

Graham Brady: Many of our EU partners, most notably the German Chancellor, believe that change in the voting weights under the proposed constitution is necessary to accommodate Turkish membership. Would the British Government support such a change?

Denis MacShane: Under the existing treaties and the new treaty, voting weights are for those who are already members of the European Union. Clearly, when and if Turkey joins, the exact number of Turkey's Members of the European Parliament, for example, would have to be discussed. Voting weights relate to the size of the population. None of us knows what our population size will be at the moment of Turkish accession. I hope that Britain's population will continue to grow, and I know that the hon. Gentleman, as the father of happy and handsome young children, is doing his best to help in the right direction.

Wayne David: Does my hon. Friend agree that the prospect of Turkey joining the EU has already proved an important catalyst in improving human rights in Turkey?

Denis MacShane: Very much so. Only five years ago, we would have been worried about the death penalty in Turkey, the number of Kurdish people in prison in Turkey, the journalists and writers in prison in Turkey, and the complete ban on the use of the Kurdish language. Many of those problems no longer exist. Rather than condemning, or demanding that Turkey adopt our levels of human rights from one day to the next, we should applaud the fact that the Turkish Parliament and Government have made more strides towards human rights in the past three or four years than at any time in the previous 300 years.

Simon Hughes: As part of the support for Turkey's joining the EU, what will the Minister do to ensure that Turkey understands that it must withdraw its troops from Cyprus as part of a settlement to restore the integrity of Cyprus? What will we do to monitor human rights in Turkey so that there are guarantees that faith minorities, ethnic minorities and other minorities have full rights at all times throughout Turkey?

Denis MacShane: On the first point, under the Annan plan, the number of troops would have been reduced to the number contained in the 1960 treaty—from some 25,000 or 30,000 today to fewer than 1,000. Unfortunately, the Greek Cypriot population voted massively to reject the Annan plan, which would have helped to solve that problem. The hon. Gentleman is right about the second point. I stress that we do raise the specific issue of different faiths in Turkey, especially different Christian faiths and the rights of their members to have their churches and seminaries. Under the EU's charter of fundamental rights, which is part of the new treaty, an absolute condition of EU membership is respect for everybody's right to manifest their religion. Again, that is a reason to support the new constitutional treaty. It is remarkable that the Turks want in to Europe, while the Tory party wants out.

Eric Illsley: Does my hon. Friend agree that Turkey's accession and the attitude of the Greek Cypriots towards it might have been helped if Turkey had agreed to withdraw some of the 35,000 troops before 2019, as the Annan plan envisaged? Does he accept that recognition of the Government of the Republic of Cyprus is an absolute prerequisite of Turkey's accession to the EU?

Denis MacShane: Again, my hon. Friend makes a fair point. I have gone on record as questioning whether the high number of Turkish troops stationed in northern Cyprus is justified by any legitimate concern for the security needs of the Turkish Cypriot people there. My hon. Friend is also right to say that, at the moment when Turkey joins the European Union, it must clearly have fully normal diplomatic relations with every other member of the Union. These points are well known; I have certainly made them both privately and on the record. It is important to allow all the inhabitants of Cyprus to trade, travel and operate freely, and I would encourage all sides to move forward in a more positive direction.

China (Arms Embargo)

Tom Harris: What recent discussions he has had with his EU counterparts on the EU arms export embargo on China.

Bill Rammell: The European Council in December 2004 discussed the EU arms embargo on China. The UK and partners invited the Luxembourg presidency of the EU to take forward work on the review of the embargo. That work is ongoing. Until the review process is complete, the Government continue fully to implement the arms embargo.

Tom Harris: The embargo was imposed after the merciless slaughter of innocents in Tiananmen square in 1989. Since then, China's human rights record has barely improved in any discernible way. At the same time, it has continued to make belligerent overtures towards Taiwan. Exactly how much of a threat must the Chinese Government pose to their own people and to their neighbours before the EU finally concludes that the embargo must remain?

Bill Rammell: There needs to be some clarity on this issue, although it has not been apparent in some of the media reporting. If and when the embargo is lifted, there will not be arms sales being undertaken that are not being undertaken at the moment, because the embargo has been overtaken by the code of conduct. However, because we are aware of the concerns, we are reviewing the code of conduct to ensure that it is as effective as we believe it to be. We are also looking to develop a toolbox for countries coming out of EU embargoes. Hon. Members can be absolutely clear that arms sales that are refused under the embargo at the moment would not take place in a post-embargo situation.

Michael Ancram: In the light of the Foreign Secretary's ongoing discussions in Washington about the proposed lifting of the embargo, does the Minister agree with the EU High Representative Javier Solana, who says that he expects that Washington
	"will be able to live with"
	the lifting of the ban? That is certainly not what the Americans are saying at the moment. Is it not crazy, by lifting the ban, to put at risk transatlantic co-operation on the sharing of military technology within NATO on which our national security could depend?

Bill Rammell: I do not believe that that co-operation is at risk. We understand the concerns expressed by the United States Government. That is why we are actively engaged in discussions with them. Part of the issue is that there is not a sufficient understanding of the effectiveness of the code of conduct. That is the message that we are communicating to our US colleagues at the moment. It is also why we are reviewing the code to ensure that it is effective, and looking to implement a toolbox for countries in a post-embargo situation.

Michael Ancram: It is a most extraordinary argument to say that we are lifting the embargo because that will not make any difference. Is it not a little disingenuous to suggest that a non-enforceable code of conduct will have little effect in changing what is happening at the moment? If that is the case, why are the French so keen to have the embargo lifted so that they can sell military technology to the Chinese, and why is China so keen to see the ban lifted so that it can buy that technology from the French? Is it not a classic example of this Government's policy of surrender in Europe that they are prepared to put at risk our national security simply to curry favour with the French?

Bill Rammell: First, let me deal with the right hon. and learned Gentleman's point about legal force. I have read his comments on this issue, and I simply do not understand his arguments. I say emphatically that the embargo has no greater legal force than the code of conduct. Arguably, it has less. Secondly, I know that there is an obsession with anti-European hysteria on the Conservative Benches, but the European Union is united on this issue and has made a strong statement that the lifting of the embargo will not lead to an increase in arms sales, either qualitatively or quantitavely. Given the right hon. and learned Gentleman's statements on this matter, I must point out that the former Prime Minister John Major was the first European Union Prime Minister to visit Beijing in the aftermath of the events in Tiananmen square, in 1991—so the statement that we are now going soft on China rings a bit hollow.

Lindsay Hoyle: I listen to what my hon. Friend the Minister has to say, but may I express the great concern among Labour Members about the lifting of the EU arms embargo? First, there is the threat to Taiwan. Secondly, the threat to Tibet continues, and China does not recognise the rights of the people of Tibet. Thirdly, there is China's religious intolerance in relation to whatever faith wishes to practise there. China needs to improve on human rights before such action is considered.

Bill Rammell: I take my hon. Friend's points about human rights, which we raise regularly with the Chinese Government. His concerns about the situation in Tibet are valid. We are encouraging the process of dialogue between the Chinese authorities and representatives of the Dalai Lama, and it is important that that process be taken forward. I need to reiterate to my hon. Friend the fact that the lifting of the embargo, which is the fundamental point, will not allow arms sales that are currently prohibited to take place. We have made it abundantly clear at the December European Council that we are not looking for an increase in arms sales to China from the European Union, in either qualitative or quantitative terms.

Jenny Tonge: I certainly do not suffer from anti-European hysteria—rather the reverse, in fact. Will the Minister assure the House that the Government will stick to their policy of never selling arms to countries that will use them for internal repression or external aggression? If he does give us that assurance, how can he possibly consider selling arms to China?

Bill Rammell: I was pondering what the opposite of hysteria is—but that is by the by. Let me be clear: under the European Union code of conduct, which we pushed for and initiated once we brought in our code of conduct, criterion four is about the preservation of regional peace, security and stability, and criterion two is about not undertaking an arms sale if there is a clear risk of internal repression. Both those categories will apply in any post-embargo situation. It is therefore simply not the case that by lifting the embargo we will suddenly see a flood of arms exports to China. We have made that abundantly clear, and we will continue to do so.

Banja Luka

Richard Bacon: If the Minister for Europe will meet the Rev. Donald Reeves to discuss the situation in Banja Luka.

Denis MacShane: Yes, I shall be delighted to meet the Rev. Donald Reeves, the former vicar of St. James's in Piccadilly, whose wonderful organisation, the Soul of Europe, is doing valuable work in Bosnia Herzegovina, particularly in Banja Luka.

Richard Bacon: I thank the Minister for agreeing to meet the Rev. Donald Reeves. Bosnia is somewhat out of the news at the moment, but important work is still going on there. Notwithstanding the difficulties that may attend the use of taxpayers' money for religious buildings overseas, will he agree that the reconstruction of the Ferhad Pasha mosque in Banja Luka is a tremendous symbol of reconciliation, and that the endorsement of the British Government, the Turkish Government and others would be of great assistance in drawing international attention to the project and ensuring its successful completion?

Denis MacShane: As with the reopening of the Mostar bridge, the British Government strongly welcome and support the rebuilding of the Ferhad Pasha mosque. In this 10th anniversary year of the Srebrenica massacres, when 8,000 Europeans were slaughtered in cold blood because they happened to be of the wrong religion, it is vital that we do all we can to put right—in a sense, through supporting the rebuilding of the mosque—that great evil. As far as I am concerned, the Rev. Donald Reeves has my full support. We have given money to his organisation in the past, and I am happy to examine as positively as I can any concrete proposals to continue the good work that he does.

China (Arms Embargo)

Julian Lewis: If he will make a statement on the EU embargo on arms sales to China.

Bill Rammell: I refer the hon. Gentleman to my earlier answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Harris).
	The European Council in December 2004 discussed the EU arms embargo on China. The UK and partners invited the Luxembourg presidency of the EU to take forward work on the review of the embargo. That is ongoing. Until the review process is complete, the Government continue fully to implement the arms embargo.

Julian Lewis: I listened to the Minister's earlier answers, and particularly to the penetrating questions put from both sides of the House. If the code will not allow any more arms to be sold to China than under the existing embargo, as he asserts, what it the point of lifting that embargo, and why are the Americans so strongly opposed to doing so?

Bill Rammell: There is an issue over whether progress has been made since the immediate aftermath of the events in Tiananmen square. While we continue to have significant concerns about the situation in China, there has undoubtedly been some progress on human rights since those events, as has been acknowledged by past Governments. Given that, we must ask ourselves whether it is right, through the arms embargo, to lump China into the same block as Burma, Sudan and Zimbabwe. That is why we are reviewing the embargo. I repeat, however, that no arms sale that has been refused until now under the embargo would, to all intents and purposes, be possible under the code of conduct. It should also be made clear that most applications for arms exports to China that have been refused in recent years have already been refused under the EU code of conduct, not under the arms embargo.

BILLS PRESENTED

European Union

Mr. Secretary Straw, supported by the Prime Minister, Mr. Secretary Prescott, Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Secretary Margaret Beckett, Mr. Secretary Hoon, Ms Secretary Hewitt, Mr. Secretary Clarke, Mr. Peter Hain, the Solicitor General, Mr. Denis MacShane and Mr. Christopher Leslie, presented a Bill to make provision in connection with the Treaty signed at Rome on 29th October 2004 establishing a Constitution for Europe; and to require a referendum to be held about it: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time tomorrow, and to be printed. Explanatory notes to be printed [Bill 45].

Cystic Fibrosis (Exemption From Prescription Charges)

Mr. Archie Norman, supported by Bob Russell, presented a Bill to exempt persons with cystic fibrosis from charges for drugs, medicines, appliances and pharmaceutical services: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 8 April, and to be printed. [Bill 46].

Succession to the Crown and Retirement of the Sovereign

Jonathan Sayeed: I beg to move,
	That leave be given to bring in a Bill to provide for Sovereigns to be chosen by the House of Commons from among the immediate family of the preceding Sovereign; to provide that all Sovereigns so chosen shall cease to be Sovereign upon reaching the age of 75; to make consequential provision relating to Regencies, succession to the Duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall, and the private estates of the Crown; and for connected purposes.
	I am a strong supporter of the monarchy. I believe that as a nation we owe this institution and its present incumbent a debt of gratitude as well as our allegiance. It is because of the selflessness of many recent monarchs, exemplified by Her Majesty the Queen, and the curb on elected tyranny that the institution provides that this apparently anachronistic institution continues to receive such widespread support. But if the monarchy is to continue to be the popular apex of an otherwise democratic pluralist state, it is right to consider whether it would be beneficial if, while retaining its traditional role, it evolved to meet modern demands and expectations. The danger is that without such evolution, the continued existence of an hereditary unreformed apex in a modern state will be pilloried as incongruous, and will be used to promote republican views.
	My proposals would enact three principles. The first is the end of succession based on male primogeniture. No account should be taken of either gender or order of birth in the determining of succession to the Crown, but this proposal would not affect the current heir. The second is the retirement of the sovereign at 75 years of age, although not in the case of our current monarch. Finally, public support for a successor should be demonstrated, possibly by Parliament sanctioning the choice of the heir from within the immediate children of the monarch, and members of the Commonwealth in which the sovereign remains the head of state should have the right to be consulted.
	It is important to make it clear at the outset that nothing in the Bill should be construed as an attack on the current sovereign, the heir or the institution of the monarchy. The changes that I propose would not affect the status of Her Majesty the Queen, or the role of His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales as her heir. Her Majesty has sworn the existing coronation oath, and Prince Charles has already been invested as her heir. It is only fair and proper that their position remain unchanged.
	The laws determining succession to the throne have their historical origins in the 17th century and the struggle between two different conceptions of monarchy: divine right, and the view that the sovereign's title rests on a willingness to rule within the law and through Parliament. The Queen rules not by simple hereditary right, as did James II, but because of the agreement by William and Mary to accept the constitutional arrangements in the 1689 Bill of Rights, then strengthened by the Act of Settlement. These rules of succession are based on the concept of primogeniture: male heirs take precedence and the Crown is offered automatically to the eldest son. It is a tradition that was historically reinforced by the feudal belief that men were better able to defend property and to lead armies into battle. This assessment of the differences in the capabilities of men and women has since been rendered irrelevant, as the modern responsibilities of the monarch have not extended to fighting in battle since 1742, when George II fought in the battle of Dettingen.
	A law of succession under which female and male heirs are considered equal has both historical and international precedence. Such precedence is found under the ancient Irish Brehon law and in the Iceni. In 1980, Sweden modernised its Act of Succession and moved to full cognatic primogeniture; a similar debate has since arisen in Spain. Her Majesty the Queen has proved that a woman is capable of fulfilling the modern leadership and advocacy roles of the British monarch as well as any man. Some of the finest English monarchs have been female, and some of the worst, male. We no longer live in need of a feudal monarchy, and the monarchy will be strengthened if it acknowledges that fact.
	Secondly, I propose that the requirement placed upon the monarch to serve until death be removed and replaced by retirement at 75. In an age when people are living longer, and in which the monarch has fulfilled a lifetime of responsibility, service and duty, it seems sensible that they should have the right to a retirement away from the commitments of the Crown, and without thereby calling the institution of monarchy into question. This change is more likely to ensure a suitable and able monarch by virtue of age, and it would allow the heir to succeed to the Crown earlier, rather than waiting all their life in the wings. It is reasonable to expect that without such changes, an heir will only ascend to the throne having reached an age at which most of their contemporaries are already drawing their pensions.
	My third proposal—that public support for a successor be demonstrated, perhaps by Parliament sanctioning choice of the heir from within the immediate children of the monarch—is the oldest idea of the three. It is witnessed in European history through the Elector of Hanover, and in Britain by the Act of Settlement of 1701, which states that it is for Parliament to decide the title to the throne. It is reinforced by the elective element at the coronation ceremony, for through the coronation oath, the sovereign acknowledges their duty to preserve the liberty of their subjects, while their representatives symbolically—and consequentially—pledge their allegiance to the sovereign.
	My ideas go further than simply bringing the monarchy into line with the basic legal and societal values of equality; they move towards reflecting a value that is at the heart of our democratic society: choice. The populace could have an indirect input into choosing the monarch, and the potential monarch could choose whether to accept the responsibilities and duties of the position. For an unwilling monarch is more likely to be an unfit monarch, and not all offspring wish to follow in their parents' footsteps. In this respect, the royal family is probably no different from our own.
	Historical precedents for these proposed changes exist alongside modern impetus, but inertia risks the monarchy being portrayed as increasingly remote and anachronistic. With that in mind, support for considering these ideas would, over time, allow change to be carried out calmly and with due consideration, rather than waiting until our hand is forced. For I want us to continue to have a sovereign—fit by the virtues of age, inclination, ability and history of service—whom we both need and from whom our nation will continue to benefit.

Patrick Cormack: Well, I have heard a few things in my time, but my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mr. Sayeed), who has performed such signal service as the chairman of the parliamentary choir, should stick to singing. Not only does he make a nicer noise and rather more sense then, but he generally reads from a better script. If I had had that text before me when I was a schoolmaster many years ago, I would have given it a gamma minus as a sixth-form essay and would not have allowed it to be discussed at great length. My hon. Friend has produced a most extraordinary tissue of ridiculous arguments. [Interruption.] First, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) reminds me in an interjection, his speech contained an extraordinary amount of ageist claptrap. The present sovereign is above the retirement age that he would prefer, which is also an oblique attack on my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Sir Peter Tapsell). We believe that people can serve extremely well way beyond the age of 75.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Bedfordshire did a little historical research, but he did not investigate the Hanoverians much. His proposal would bring back the heir's party and the sovereign's party all over again. It would politicise the monarchy by making people in this House take sides for or against a particular potential heir.
	The whole thing is absurd. In all my time in the House, I have never heard a less credible argument. I never thought that the day would come when a Conservative colleague—one who belongs to the constitutional party—would propose so much claptrap and nonsense to the House. This Bill should be seen off immediately.
	Question put, pursuant to Standing Order No. 23 (Motions for leave to bring in Bills and nomination of Select Committees at commencement of public business), and negatived.

Opposition Day
	 — 
	[3rd Allotted Day]

Licensing Act 2003

Mr. Speaker: I inform the House that I have selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister.

David Davis: I beg to move,
	That this House calls for a delay in the implementation of the Licensing Act 2003 in the light of concerns expressed by doctors, senior police officers and members of the judiciary that the Act will lead to increased health and policing problems; is concerned about the increase in violent crimes since 1998, half of which are attributed to alcohol misuse; recognises that drunken revellers are turning town and city centres into no-go areas, thus putting an increasing burden on health and police resources, and predicts that the implementation of the Act will exacerbate these problems; is further concerned about increased alcohol consumption and believes that extended opening hours will have an adverse serious effect on health of the nation; and regrets that the Government has fundamentally failed to deal with the problem of binge drinking before proceeding with the implementation of the Licensing Act 2003.
	I am conscious of a slight irony as I open this debate. After all, in recent times the Government have shown a distinct interest in telling us what to eat, what to do in our spare time and how to raise our children. In terms of sheer nannying, the Government have few equals. However, although there is genuine concern about this matter among experts, professionals and the general public, the Government are taking the exact opposite approach. I shall argue today that, by pressing ahead with 24-hour drinking, the Government are neglecting their responsibilities. Once again, they are displaying a perverse sense of priorities and an arrogant disregard for all contrary opinion.
	Britain is now one of the worst countries in Europe for binge drinking. It begins with the young. Young people under 16 drink twice as much as they did a decade ago. A third of all British 15-year-olds say that they have been drunk at some time in their lives. That compares to just one in 10 in France and Italy. The British Medical Journal reports that more than 2,000 drunken children are admitted to hospital every year.
	However, it is not just a young person's problem. Overall, Britons are drinking 12 per cent. more today than in 1997. One adult man in three now exceeds the recommended guidelines on alcohol consumption, and the figure for women is one in five. UK consumers spend more of their disposable income on alcohol than they do on personal goods and services, fuel and power, or tobacco.
	Some might say that that is their choice, but the annual cost of crime and antisocial behaviour linked to alcohol misuse is estimated to be more than £7 billion. The cost of productivity lost as a result of alcohol misuse is estimated to be more than £6 billion. Every year, 17 million working days are lost because of alcohol-related absence.
	The problem is about more than just money. First, there is the cost to our health. Liver disease is now an increasingly frequent cause of death. The incidence of liver cirrhosis is rising among 20 and 30-year-olds, and 70 per cent of all weekend night-time admissions to accident and emergency departments are linked to alcohol. That is a problem that our already overworked doctors and nurses could do without.
	Secondly, there is the crime and disorder cost. Since 1998, violent crime has increased by 83 per cent. There are now over a million violent crimes each year, and the police say that alcohol is largely to blame for this increase. Every week in England and Wales, there are 23,000 incidents of alcohol-related violence and 360 drink-related sexual assaults. Around a third of all domestic violence is related to alcohol misuse.
	Third, there is the cost to us all of binge drinking. The rise in binge drinking is having a disastrous effect on our towns and cities. The delicately termed night-time economy can mean a lifetime of misery for those unfortunate enough to live in the vicinity of late-opening pubs and clubs. Their sleep is disturbed. Their gardens get filled with litter, and worse. They fear to go out on to their own streets at night, and they cannot escape because the value of their houses is cut by 20 per cent. or more. Ask any family in a town or city centre up and down the country what is the biggest threat to their quality of life and it will not take them long to mention drunken louts hanging around the streets.

Frank Dobson: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

David Davis: I will give way to the right hon. Gentleman in a minute, because he has a long and honourable record on the issue.
	In those same towns and cities every weekend—and indeed on some week nights too—revellers pile out of pubs and bars so intoxicated that they are beyond coherent speech or reason. Young women are so inebriated that they are oblivious to how they are going to get home. Young men stagger around looking for fights. One serving policeman wrote to me last week and said:
	"I don't want to work even more late and night shifts to cater for drunken idiots. Why should we put ourselves at risk to clear up the mess on the streets?"
	Another police officer described 90 per cent. of his job on a Friday and Saturday night as falling under the "mopping up category".
	The culture of excess and violence being allowed to develop was evocatively described by Judge Charles Harris when, sentencing some hooligans, he said:
	"People, or people like you, are making the towns of England revolting and dangerous places at night . . . It is being assisted by legislation to make alcohol available at all times of day and night, which is OK for reasonable human beings, but you are of the attitude of trying to drink as much as you can for as long as you can. You became ugly urban savages by your behaviour, which resulted in serious violence".
	Indeed, under this Government, things have got worse. And it should not be that way.
	The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport said in a memo to the Prime Minister, leaked to the Sunday Times recently:
	"It is already an offence to sell alcohol to people who are drunk or to permit drunkenness or disorderly behaviour on licensed premises. We need to ask why the existing closure powers are so rarely used by the police".
	Indeed we do. The previous Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett), made it clear that drunkenness and disorderly behaviour was spiralling out of control. On that basis, convictions for drunk and disorderly behaviour should have grown rapidly. However, since this Government came to power, the number of people found guilty or cautioned for drunk and disorderly behaviour has fallen by 10,000—about 20 per cent. In that time, the number of minors convicted or cautioned for buying alcohol has fallen by 80 per cent. Under-age drinking has been virtually decriminalised under this Government, and only five pubs have had their licence revoked in recent years.
	The Prime Minister recently said that the police would be given new powers to shut down problem pubs, but the powers that already exist have simply not been used.

Frank Dobson: I agree with virtually every word that the right hon. Gentleman has said. What I cannot understand is why his predecessor as shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin), never said any of this when the Bill was introduced in 2003. Some of us who were concerned about those issues might have welcomed a little support from Tory Front Benchers.

David Davis: I am coming to exactly that point now. Just before the 2001 general election, the Labour party texted voters saying:
	"Cldnt give a XXXX 4 last ordrs? Vote Labour 4 xtra time".
	That is the motive behind what we hear today. When the Licensing Bill was first introduced, the Conservative spokesman raised concerns about the potential for a decline
	"in civilised behaviour on our streets as a result of flexible drinking hours".
	She described it presciently as a "leap in the dark", a phrase that was used later by the previous Home Secretary when he expressed his fears about it. But it is undoubtedly true—as the right hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson) pointed out—that people on both sides of the House largely accepted the Government's arguments that relaxation of the licensing laws would improve the situation, not make it worse. Hon. Members accepted those arguments on the basis of information provided by the Government.
	There have been a number of allegations in the press about Government cover-ups and misleading information, and it is an extremely serious charge to allege that the Government have misled the House. If proven, it would normally require a Minister to resign. I do not know whether the Government's extremely partial stance was deliberate, the result of incoherence between Departments, or a matter of simple incompetence. My review of the Government's pronouncements during and since the proceedings on the Licensing Act 2003 have led me to believe that they have been literally economical with the truth. I listened very carefully to the explanation from the Home Secretary and the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport.

Jim Knight: The right hon. Gentleman is making insinuations, but is it not the practice in Standing Committee debates—I was a member of the Standing Committee that considered the Act—to table probing amendments? I recall amendments on, for example, whether we should start a clause with a conjunction. We had long debates about that, but I do not recall a single amendment from the Conservative party on flexible drinking hours.

David Davis: If the hon. Gentleman listens to what I say next, he will understand why. We now discover that, before, during and for a short while after the Act went through its proceedings in Parliament, the Government led us to believe that the police were content with these proposals. We now discover that more than half of all police forces are deeply concerned by this Act. Steve Green, the chief constable of Nottinghamshire police and, incidentally, the spokesman from the Association of Chief Police Officers on alcohol-fuelled violence, warned that
	"24 hour drinking under the current drinking culture . . . would make for a far greater violent crime problem".
	Or as he put it on another occasion, it would make for "a 24 hour . . . hell".
	In its assessment of the impact of the Licensing Act—it was not shown to the public or the Opposition—the Metropolitan police said that the Act would "fuel" Britain's drinking culture and
	"increase the potential for victims of crime".
	There was also no indication during the passage of the Act that the medical fraternity had concerns.

Charles Hendry: Does my right hon. Friend understand the police's concern at the effect that the measure will have on recruitment? If they see more and more of the job as policing the unruly people who have come out of the pubs late and the antisocial behaviour that is fuelled by alcohol, it will become more and more difficult to recruit people into the police in the first place.

David Davis: My hon. Friend is entirely right. The measure will affect many aspects of policing. It will draw the police away from the other crimes that they should be dealing with. As he said, they will become demoralised as they have to deal with rather unpleasant tasks.

Kevin Brennan: I take it from the right hon. Gentleman's remarks that he is telling the House that today's debate is the result of the Conservative party's abject failure as an effective Opposition.

David Davis: The hon. Gentleman should read a little more. If he reads John Maynard Keynes, he will find that Keynes said, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?" That is clearly what the hon. Gentleman does not do. He simply has a prejudice that he starts and ends with.

Jonathan Sayeed: Is not the question that Ministers should answer whether, overall, society would benefit from 24-hour boozing? We now know that much more information was given to the Government at the time and that it was not released to the rest of us. There is now even further information and each of the bits of information, apart from that from the drinks industry, suggests that 24-hour drinking would be very bad for Britain.

David Davis: My hon. Friend makes an apposite point. As I was about to say, there was no indication during the passage of the Act that the medical fraternity had concerns. When the Government published their alcohol harm reduction strategy paper, the report highlighted the adverse impacts of binge drinking on the nation's health, and on levels of antisocial behaviour. However, evidence has now come to light that the Government withheld several criticisms of their policy on licensing. The Sunday Times has reported that the paper was redrafted to remove evidence of a link between drink and 19,000 sex assaults a year and the "adverse" effect 24-hour opening might have on local residents.
	Many experts consulted by the Government concluded that the increased alcohol consumption resulting from liberalisation of licensing laws would have a severe negative impact. These concerns were included in a draft of the report that was circulated to the Cabinet in August 2003. However, they had been removed from the report by the time an interim report was published in September. One of the report's expert contributors, Professor Griffith Edwards, said at the time:
	"I have seldom seen a consensus of informed scientific advice so trashed and ignored".
	According to Professor Colin Drummond, professor of addictive psychiatry at St. George's hospital medical school:
	"One of the striking things was that when the final report was published there were a great number of things that really just didn't appear there at all. I think it's extremely important and certainly the academics and the Royal Colleges that commented on the Strategy are very concerned that these things had been left out."
	Professor Drummond also said:
	"I think it's an example of sexing down a dossier on alcohol problems really . . . evidence that was clearly available to the review team that was compiling the interim analysis was not included in the final report, and there must be reasons behind that."

Adrian Bailey: Given that the logic of the right hon. Gentleman's argument and the evidence that he has put forward seem to imply that there will be more binge drinking and antisocial behaviour if the licensing hours are relaxed, will he argue that, to curb binge drinking, there should be a less flexible licensing regime and shorter drinking hours?

David Davis: If the hon. Gentleman waits a few minutes, he will hear exactly what I am going to argue. It is not quite as foolish and short-term as that.
	Let us consider what else was not said. We finally discover that the Home Office itself had very serious concerns about the Act. The former Home Secretary, as I said earlier, described the proposal as
	"a leap in the dark".
	Ellie Roy, the Home Office's crime reduction director, told a meeting of officials from Downing street, the Treasury and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport that there was
	"widespread concern that the licensing act will make matters worse".
	She was supported by Leigh Lewis, a permanent secretary at the Home Office and the Government's most senior crime-fighting mandarin. At a meeting in February to discuss "Home Office concerns with the Licensing Act", Lewis outlined official unpublished research showing links between binge drinking and violence. He said:
	"Violent crime was up 14 per cent., a significant proportion was taking place in proximity to licensed premises . . . Stranger crime was increasing significantly; and 47 per cent. of the victims of violent crime believed that their assailant was under the influence of alcohol".
	None of these facts or expert opinions, available to the Government at the time, was put into the public domain during the passage of the Act—not one of them—and many of them were actively withheld.

David Winnick: This debate and the debate in Westminster Hall this morning have, at least, enabled us to focus on alcohol misuse. The right hon. Gentleman said that when the Act went through Committee, the Government did not provide this or that information. However, was it not the job of the Opposition to try to find out from the medical profession and the police their views and criticisms of what was proposed? Is it not the case that the Opposition have decided that this is a popular issue to exploit and, late in the day, are jumping on the bandwagon?

David Davis: The hon. Gentleman has an interesting view of government and opposition. He assumes that we have to assume that the Government will tell lies. That is what his remarks amount to.
	Let us be clear. No one objects to anyone having a good time; no one wants to stop people having fun or enjoying themselves. Of course, it is true that the vast majority of people can be trusted to behave responsibly and not to cause trouble for others, but that is not what we are talking about today. We are talking about the Government's clear decision to allow pubs to open for 24 hours a day—a decision that international evidence suggests could lead to greater irresponsible drinking.
	In Western Australia, an extension of bar closing times to l am led to a rise in alcohol consumption, violence and drunkenness. In Scotland, one newspaper reported a
	"huge increase in violent crime in some of Edinburgh's most lively areas",
	with one senior police officer directly linking this to the increase in the number of licensed premises. In Ireland, the Intoxicating Liquor Act 2000 ushered in an era of more violence, more damage, and more disorder. The Irish Times reported that
	"the consequences of excessive drinking are visible late at night on the streets of our cities, towns and villages. They are reflected in crowded accident and emergency wards in hospitals and, all too frequently, victims of alcohol-related violence end up on mortuary slabs".
	The paper was clear what was responsible: It said:
	"The rise in alcohol consumption was facilitated by longer pub opening hours."
	The mess caused by Ireland's Intoxicating Liquor Act 2000 had to be followed by tough measures in the Intoxicating Liquor Acts 2003 and 2004. We can avoid the need for such a legislative onslaught here simply by delaying the implementation of the Licensing Act 2003.

David Taylor: The right hon. Gentleman complains that the Government failed to bring relevant statistics into the public domain when the Licensing Bill was considered, but surely the Opposition receive Short money so that they can reveal obvious points. For example, an Office for National Statistics survey in 1998 showed that 22 per cent. of men and 8 per cent. of women were binge drinkers, but six years later, each of those figures had increased by 1 per cent. I am not trying to minimise the issue, but the facts are there and it is up to the Opposition to oppose.

David Davis: The approach is wonderful: the Government lie and we are at fault.
	Let me address the solution for which the hon. Member for West Bromwich, West (Mr. Bailey) asked. In the Government's scramble last week, they probably realised that their original underpinning principle of 24-hour opening was wrong. Rather than stretching hours to decrease disorder, the new laws will actually increase violent and antisocial drunken behaviour. The Government still claim that 24-hour opening will lead to more responsible drinking, but I doubt that very much, as do most experts.
	One only has to look at what happens when the youngsters who stagger out on to our streets at closing time go to places such as Faliraki or Ibiza. They drink for 24 hours, become drunk and disorderly and create trouble for the locals. In Britain, the front-line services will pick up the pieces. The impact on our already overstretched police and medical services will be huge. Chief Constable Steve Green said that in Nottingham, officers are diverted away from where they should be to cover the policing of the city centre. The Metropolitan Police Federation said that
	"most police areas will be bereft of police officers from"
	2 am
	"because time is spent dealing with the consequences of binge drinking".
	Ireland had to learn the hard way, with three years of misery followed by two major revisions of the law. We should not make the same mistake. The right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) has called for pilot schemes in a small number of towns. His call has been supported by the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mr. Hinchliffe), the Chairman of the Select Committee on Health, and also The Guardian, which reminds us that the Government were elected on a pledge to pursue "evidence-based policies". I agree with them. As the Chief Constable of Nottingham said when he gave evidence to the Home Affairs Committee, there are a huge number of unknowns.
	As part of the plans cobbled together last week, the Government announced alcohol disorder zones. How will those zones work? If they are drawn up geographically, they could end up penalising establishments that have never had any problems. If they are drawn up by establishment, they could force rowdy drunks to go to normally quiet pubs, thus ruining other customers' pleasure and destroying the reputation of decent landlords. Could a police force legally establish and sustain a zone, and could a zone be challenged? We do not know how robust the proposed regulatory regime will be.

Frank Field: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

David Davis: No.
	The proposal to exclude individuals from local pubs is equally naive. First, it requires the individual to be caught misbehaving in our under-policed cities in the early hours of the morning, and secondly the exclusion must be policed, presumably by bar staff, who are often young or temporary, in large drinking establishments. If it does work, what will it do but force people to different, more distant, pubs? It would encourage them to undertake a more extended pub crawl and perhaps to compound the felony with a drink-driving offence, thus putting the innocent public at even more risk. I hope that I am wrong, but remember that it took the Government nearly six years to get antisocial behaviour orders into a workable form.
	The intelligent and reasonable approach is obvious: defer 24-hour drinking until these and other methods of dealing with binge drinking have been tested and made workable, and then pilot the liberalisation in a few local authority areas. We should only then let the Act come into full effect. That approach would cost nothing, and could indeed save a great deal. All it requires is a Government who will face the facts and put the interests of the many before the excesses of the few.

Charles Clarke: I beg to move, To leave out from "House" to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof:
	"considers that failure to implement the Licensing Act 2003 without delay would deny the local community increased powers of intervention and improved democratic accountability with regard to licensing, deny the police the expanded powers that are vital to their efforts to tackle alcohol-related crime and would prevent licensing authorities from receiving income from licensing fees needed to recover on-going expenditure in preparing for the new regime; believes that any delay in the implementation of the Act would undermine the prevention of crime and disorder and public nuisance, damage public safety and hinder the protection of children from harm; further believes that the Act will complement the delivery of the Alcohol Harm Reduction Strategy for England which aims to reduce excessive drinking and the harms that causes; and, furthermore, commends the proposals for Alcohol Disorder Zones and the extension of fixed penalty notices and other measures set out in 'Drinking Responsibly', the consultation paper published jointly by the Home Office, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister on 21st January 2005."
	I am absolutely delighted that we are having the debate because I hope that it will bring clarity to a matter that has become confused in a wide variety of ways.
	Let me start with common ground. I agreed with every word of the first four or five minutes of the speech made by the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis). His description of the state of affairs that we must address was genuinely shocking and he was right to highlight the situation. The figures that I shall cite simply reinforce the points that he made. Half of all violent crime is alcohol related, and one in five violent crimes occurs in or around pubs and clubs. Alcohol misuse costs up to £20 billion a year, and up to 70 per cent. of entrants to accident and emergency departments in hospitals overnight are fuelled by alcohol. The problem exists, but it is important to acknowledge that the situation that the right hon. Gentleman eloquently described—and that my statistics reinforce—exists today without any change to licensing hours whatsoever.

Jonathan Sayeed: Will the Home Secretary tell us the number of road accidents resulting in injury or fatality that are caused by alcohol or drug abuse?

Charles Clarke: I do not have the figures to hand, but the hon. Gentleman is correct to say that alcohol is a major aspect of fatalities among people who drive. Such abuse is serious, but that is the case whether we have the current licensing arrangements or the new flexible arrangements that have been established.

Several hon. Members: rose—

Charles Clarke: I shall give way a couple more times and then make progress.

Eric Illsley: Will my right hon. Friend bear it in mind that the genesis of licensing law reform came in 1995 when the then Conservative Government produced a measure, as part of their deregulation initiative, to extend the opening hours of pubs until midnight? That was passed in the House without question and failed only when it was voted down in the House of Lords. The idea of extending licensing hours came from the last Conservative Government.

Charles Clarke: My hon. Friend is exactly right. To be fair to the Conservative Government, they were trying to examine the matter on its merits, rather than being driven by a populist response to specific issues as they came up.

Patrick McLoughlin: The right hon. Gentleman has been talking about drink-related accidents on our roads. There is a problem in this country because there is insufficient knowledge about the length of time for which alcohol stays in the bloodstream, and thus the time for which one can be over the limit after having a drink. Does he not think that that problem could get worse under 24-hour licensing?

Charles Clarke: No, I do not, but I shall address that point in a second.
	There is common ground among hon. Members about the problems caused by alcohol consumption in our society, but the argument has confused two separate questions, as the motion deliberately tries to do: first, what will be the effect of flexible licensing hours; and secondly, what can we do to address alcohol-fuelled crime, especially violent crime? I want to try to disentangle those important questions.

Mark Field: Will the Secretary of State give way?

Charles Clarke: I am going to make a little progress.
	On the first question, evidence shows that liberalising licensing hours does not necessary lead to the increased use of alcohol. The right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden says that he is looking for evidence, so let me simply cite the effect of changes in this country.
	Several well documented conclusions were drawn from the change to all-day opening in Scotland in 1976, which I shall cite to inform the House, as the right hon. Gentleman would want me to. In 1974, average spending on alcohol in Scotland was greater than in England and Wales, but following the change to the licensing laws, the gap narrowed and in 1983—seven years after the changes—the average Scottish household was spending 7 per cent. less than the UK average.
	To address the point made by the hon. Member for West Derbyshire (Mr. McLoughlin), drunk-driving convictions in Scotland increased by 1.2 per cent., compared with an increase of 36 per cent. in England and Wales over the same period. Violence against the person increased in Scotland by 16.7 per cent., compared with 43.8 per cent. in England and Wales.
	Convictions for under-age drinking fell by 18.6 per cent. in Scotland in the four years after reform, compared with a rise of more than 23 per cent. in England and Wales. Convictions for drunkenness in Scotland fell by 13.6 per cent. in the five years following the change, compared with a rise of 13.1 per cent. in England and Wales. In the 19 to 26 age group, the decline in Scotland was 14.1 per cent., compared with a rise of 19.2 per cent. in England and Wales. Those were the effects of the changes—

Frank Field: Will my right hon. Friend give way?

Charles Clarke: I shall give two more examples, then give way.
	The second change was to all-day opening in England and Wales, for which the Conservative Government legislated in 1988. The introduction of all-day opening that year was followed by a decline in per capita alcohol consumption in each of the next five years. The consequence is clear. My final example before giving way is that of extended new year's eve opening in England and Wales after 1999. Most police forces and local authorities reported significant improvements as a result of the change. That is the evidence of the state of affairs resulting from changes made in this country, and it must be taken into account.

Frank Field: Could not the first set of statistics that my right hon. Friend presented be read differently, to show that although consumption in Scotland has increased, it has increased faster in this country? The question that the Government have to answer is whether further liberalisation of licensing laws will lessen consumption or increase it.

Charles Clarke: My right hon. Friend is entirely right—that is the question that must be addressed. People of good will can come to different views of the potential change; I simply place in evidence the fact that where change has taken place, it has not led to the increase in consumption that was feared—in fact, the reverse has happened. I accept that many hon. Members, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson) and others, have, for reasons of perfect propriety, taken the view that the proposed step is risky and undesirable—but the principal force of my argument is that we should not entangle the debate on licensing hours with the debate on how to fight the impact of over-consumption of alcohol, alcohol-related crime and so on. Both are important issues that must be given proper consideration, but they are separate: the link between the two is not made and should not be thought to have been made.

Henry Bellingham: The Home Secretary reads our local newspaper, the Eastern Daily Press, so he is aware of the problems in King's Lynn affecting the residents of Pilot street in particular, and of the fact that most of the local police apparently oppose liberalisation. I do not know whether he has spoken to the chief constable of Norfolk about the proposals, but what have the Norfolk police told him about the Government's proposals?

Charles Clarke: I shall mention the chief constable of Norfolk if the hon. Gentleman wants, but the fact is that the problems in King's Lynn have arisen without any of the proposed changes being made.

Angela Watkinson: Will the Home Secretary come to the London borough of Havering and speak to local residents, police, councillors and accident and emergency department staff? The fallout from the largest concentration of late-night entertainment centres outside the west end, in Romford, monopolises the services of the police and the local hospital. I guarantee that he will not find anyone who wants licensing hours extended.

Charles Clarke: I shall not accept the hon. Lady's kind invitation to Havering and Romford. However, I visit many places and discuss with people precisely those questions.

David Davis: The Home Secretary properly attempts to distinguish 24-hour licensing and binge drinking, but the former has two effects. The first is to allow perfectly normal, reasonable, law-abiding people more time for their leisure and pleasure, and we all agree with that—there is no argument between us. The other effect, shown by the operational evidence from Nottinghamshire, where Stephen Green is chief constable—the sort of evidence that has persuaded the right hon. Gentleman's own advisers—is that it creates the opportunity for further binge drinking. If he has answers to or effective methods of dealing with the problem of binge drinking, the opportunity opens up for a safer extension to 24-hour opening.

Charles Clarke: I agree with part of that statement. The right hon. Gentleman is right to say that in places like Nottingham city centre we need a package of measures to deal with the ill. I know about Nottingham—many people have spoken to me about the situation there and I have discussed it with the chief constable. I understand that we need a set of measures to target that particular problem in a focused way. That is why, last Friday, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport and my hon. Friend the Minister for Crime Reduction, Policing and Community Safety announced a set of measures to do just that, including the establishment of alcohol disorder zones. I cannot predict what will happen, but I would be surprised if Nottingham did not fall within the relevant category. Also announced were powers to enable the immediate closure of establishments—for making under-age sales, for example—and to tackle irresponsible promotions. We shall also review the penalties for alcohol-related disorder. Why? Because with each of those measures, we acknowledge the truth of the right hon. Gentleman's words: it is necessary to move away from any idea of accommodating the problem of alcohol-fuelled disorder and towards its eradication through the type of measure that I have suggested. The key point is that those measures stand in their own terms. They are designed to deal with the situation in Romford, Nottingham and other areas, irrespective of the issues relating to licensing flexibility.

Mark Field: Does the Home Secretary not understand that having to announce all those new initiatives to deal with the problems in all our town centres under the current regime makes nonsense of liberalising the drinking laws? What is the point of the initiatives, if not to deal with the present situation?

Charles Clarke: The aim of the police, including the chief constables of Nottingham and of Norfolk and the other chief constables with whom I have discussed the problems, is to make an impact on binge drinking through the type of measure that I have announced. That is why the president of the Association of Chief Police Officers accompanied my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport on the platform of last Friday's press conference to commit ACPO as a whole to implementing the measures and making them work. I can tell the House confidentially—[Laughter.] I know that the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden is concerned about confidentiality. The principal reason for the concern that is rightly adduced by some senior police officers was simple: there were resources issues and those who were causing alcohol-related crime—establishments in the areas in which binge drinking was common—were not, in the view of the police, making a sufficient contribution. We have addressed that problem; the measures announced by my right hon. Friend last Friday have to be carried through, but they explicitly answer those concerns.
	Such measures reinforce the implementation of the recommendations in our alcohol harm reduction strategy. Those include close working with industry to draft a code of practice covering on and off trade and producers. As an aside, I observe that some of the problems to which the right hon. Gentleman referred are as much the result of off-licence purchases as of on-licence purchases. That problem needs to be dealt with, and alcohol disorder zones give us the powers to tackle it. The code will be supported by an accreditation scheme that incentivises good practice and highlights poor operators. We are working on making the sensible drinking message easier and clearer, so that people can make informed choices, and on establishing a range of fixed penalty notices. The police will have powers to close immediately an area or premises where disorder is occurring or anticipated, or where there is excessive noise.
	I emphasise that, thanks to the legislation, we have a unique opportunity in the fact that all licences are up for renewal in the coming six months. Today, I ask that all applicants be properly assessed by the local authority on the basis of advice from the police regarding their appropriateness to hold a licence to sell alcohol. We therefore have a new mechanism for review.

Mark Field: Central London has particular problems. One of the grave concerns about the new initiatives felt by those who represent the area—including the right hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson), with whom I have Covent Garden in common—is that many of them will simply give the green light to the larger-scale outlets of the alcohol and entertainment industry and that some of the small, independent, family-run businesses that lie at the heart of our communities will either be driven out of business, or forced to sell up to a larger organisation. In other words, we will be playing to the lowest common denominator.

Charles Clarke: I do not accept that. I think that as a result of the proposed measures, the well run family pub will be in a far stronger position vis-à-vis the competition.

Frank Field: There is widespread support on the Opposition Benches for the approach that those who cause some of the disorder in our towns and cities should pay more to cover policing costs. In Wirral, the police have taken eight cases before the magistrates to try to deny a licence to those who produce many drunks at the end of the day, and they have lost all of those cases. Under the new system, will my right hon. Friend support local authorities, when they are pushed by highly paid QCs on the other side, to maintain the line against licensing continuing?

Charles Clarke: I can answer that question unequivocally: yes. I cite an example not from the Wirral but from my own constituency, where precisely these events happened. A licence was granted on appeal. There were precisely the legal issues that my right hon. Friend has described. It was granted despite the opposition of both the local authority and the police. I strongly hold the view that these measures, for the first time, will give a greatly increased power, compared with the previous situation, to tackle precisely the abuse that my right hon. Friend describes.

Eric Pickles: The right hon. Gentleman speaks about the review of licences by local authorities that will take place. The figures for the fees were produced on Friday, and they are based on rateable value. This coincides with a general revaluation, which means that there will be a perverse incentive for local licensees to make an application during the transitional period. To ameliorate that, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport has announced a review. Will that review take into consideration the actual cost during the period of transition? Will it include the fee level? Will consideration be given to the structure of the licensing committees in terms of numbers?

Charles Clarke: My right hon. Friend has made it perfectly clear—she will speak for herself when she replies—that the monitoring process will include all aspects of these matters with a view to assessing the best way to go forward.

Jim Knight: My right hon. Friend has mentioned some of the powers and initiatives that the Government want to have and to take to tackle binge drinking. I am a strong supporter of the Licensing Act 2003, but I shall be interested to know whether anything more can be done to support those in the alcohol industry who, voluntarily, are trying to do something about happy hours and incentives for people to binge drink. Can the Government take any more serious action to work with the industry in that direction?

Charles Clarke: My hon. Friend is correct. One of the measures that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport announced on Friday was designed specifically to encourage that approach. We intend to offer support to the alcohol industry in banning irresponsible promotions. We want to see all promotions that encourage speed drinking ended. These are promotions such as, "All you can drink for £X.99", or, "All girls drink free between 11 and 12." We want to see a set of measures that will strengthen the voluntary regulation of the industry. We are supporting the British Beer and Pub Association and others in developing guidance to owners and operators that will ban irresponsible drink promotions. I hope that I have given my hon. Friend the assurance that he is seeking.

Kevin Brennan: Like my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Jim Knight), I support the measures set out in the Licensing Act 2003. I was concerned enough about the guidelines issued by my local authority to write asking it to strengthen them. It was able to do so in some areas. It replied, tending to say that the Government's guidelines did not allow it to go as far as I wanted so as to have local control over these issues, as promised in the Act. Is my right hon. Friend happy that the Government's guidelines are robust enough to enable us to achieve our goals?

Charles Clarke: I am happy with that. More importantly, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport is happy with that.
	My hon. Friend is on to a correct point in saying that it is critical to ensure that Members and others press their local authorities to take the action that is necessary to deal with the situation. I know that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is of the view that in the process of implementing these changes, and if it emerges that there are genuine constraints in the guidelines that need to be addressed, the situation will be addressed. At present, we are categoric that the guidelines are right to deal with these matters. As I said a short while ago, I ask all applicants to ensure that all applications in this process of renewal are properly assessed and that the opportunity is taken to do that in detail.
	The weakest position will arise where a local authority and a local crime reduction partnership have not properly assessed what strategically must be done to attack the problem in a particular community. It is part of the strength of our democracy that different issues arise in different areas. I hope that right hon. and hon. Members will put pressure on their crime reduction partnerships and local authorities to address the issue in the proper way.
	The measures to which I have referred are substantial in range. A flexible range of measures will be available after review that hit profits in areas where there is abuse that needs to be dealt with through, for example, a temporary or permanent reduction in trading hours. The maximum fine for selling to under-18s is increased from £1,000 to £5,000. The new licensing fee package has been announced and we believe that it will make things more effective. I have referred to the banning of irresponsible promotions and other issues that need to be tackled in that area.
	I shall focus for a moment on alcohol disorder zones, which will create a direct link between the level of disorder in a locality and the financial contribution that is required from the industry. I believe that the zones will act as a powerful incentive for the industry to get its own house in order in any given locality. That is why I so strongly support the zones. Before an alcohol disorder zone is imposed, operators will be given a warning. They will be given a chance to work with the police and the council to agree an action plan for improvement. This approach is not draconian or arbitrary. It is designed to ensure that everybody takes the issue seriously and addresses it properly. This is the right approach and the right way to go forward.
	We are establishing a 24-hour closure power against premises that repeatedly sell to under-18s. I do not believe that the family pub will be threatened by that because they do not repeatedly sell to under-18s. The power will apply to both on and off-licences, which is a strength of the proposals. The power will be triggered where evidence is gathered to suggest persistent selling to under-18s.

David Davis: The right hon. Gentleman has announced a number of what appear to be sensible measures. One of the concerns that I raised earlier was that many existing measures are not being used. I take, for example, under-age drinking. There has been a halving of the prosecutions for sales to under-age drinkers and almost an elimination of cautions and prosecutions against under-18s who have bought drink. How will the right hon. Gentleman ensure that these measures are used?

Charles Clarke: The right hon. Gentleman is right. It is a point that I raised with the police when I first met them to discuss these matters. There is an issue about resources, which we are tackling. There is also an issue about new powers, which we are addressing in the way that I have described. There is also an issue, as the right hon. Gentleman rightly says, about the use of existing powers so that there is proper enforcement.
	I can say only two things at this juncture. First, the greater powers that we have given to local government, working with the police, will strengthen the ability to enforce. That will be their direct result. Secondly, my colleagues in the police have been clear in acknowledging that there is a need to act more on the enforcement side. To be frank, the fact that we have given them what they are looking for in this regard will enable us more effectively to carry through our policy.
	We already have a number of measures in place to tackle the problem of alcohol-fuelled disorder. The police enforcement campaigns, the alcohol harm reduction strategy, the Christmas drinking campaigns and the introduction of the new fixed penalty notices are having an effect. Part of the industry is already raising its game and acting responsibly, and we welcome that. However, we need to do far more. The measures proposed last Friday in the consultation paper are a robust package to ensure that the industry and individuals take their full responsibility for their part in the problems of alcohol-related disorder. We must keep clear in our minds the need to have a focused strategy to tackle alcohol abuse, which is what we have put forward. We must not confuse that issue, which is very important, with the other important issue of more flexible opening hours, which I believe will be of benefit to the country as a whole.

Frank Dobson: I start by feeling somewhat embarrassed because both my right hon. Friends the Home Secretary and the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport have been friends of mine for in excess of a quarter of a century. I hope that they will not take offence at some of the things that I have to say.
	I fundamentally believe in representative government. Nobody gets into this place, nobody becomes a junior Minister, a Cabinet Minister or even a Prime Minister unless they purport to represent their constituents. In pursuit of trying to represent the interests of my constituents, for more than six or seven years I have been urging Ministers to take action to tackle the disorder, the nuisance and the loutish behaviour that is making life intolerable for people living in many parts of my constituency. It is not just the people living there whose lives are made intolerable but people who want to go to the theatre or a restaurant in the area where all that drinking is taking place. That applies to my constituency, Covent Garden, our part of the west end and Camden Town. I have been raising this issue for a number of years, but we have never had a jot of support from Tory or Liberal Democrat Front Benchers. I have been joined in my efforts by my hon. Friend the Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North (Ms Buck) and, if I am truthful, the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Field), and his predecessor, Peter Brooke, who is now a Member of the House of Lords. We have pressed for the law to be toughened up to protect law-abiding people who are going about their business and, above all, to ensure that local residents can maintain the quiet enjoyment of their homes, to which everyone is entitled. My hon. Friend the Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North can claim the credit for some of the best parts of the Licensing Act 2003.
	When my right hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Clarke) was a Minister of State at the Home Office, I took a delegation of local people to see him. When we came out of his office, they said that he really understood what they were talking about, and listened to their points about disorder. Partly as a result of that meeting, the law was changed so that licensed premises that are a source of disorder can be closed by the police for 24 hours without resort to magistrates or anyone else. That was greatly to my right hon. Friend's credit, and it was a big step forward.
	About four years ago, along with my hon. Friend the Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North, I met the then Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw). We made many more points, and I remember confessing that I had not pressed my right hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, South enough. My right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn agreed that 24-hour closures could be extended beyond premises causing disorder to premises causing serious nuisance. That provision has since become law. He agreed that councils should have a licensing plan so that if they received applications for a new premises they could say, "I'm sorry, this street has enough booze outlets already". That, too, is an important provision in the Licensing Act. He also agreed that all the costs of dealing with licensing, when transferred to local authorities, would have to be met in full from the fees charged to the licensing applicants. When he agreed to those three concessions, one or two officials, while not exactly grinding their teeth, were none too jolly about it. Nevertheless, it was the right thing to do.
	When my right hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Tessa Jowell) became Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, responsibility for the booze laws was transferred to her Department. I mentioned the three undertakings that we had been given, but she told me that her officials could not find any record of them. Fortunately, I had issued a press release, which was cleared by my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn, and when I passed a copy to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, she accepted those undertakings, all three of which were included in the Licensing Act. There were further meetings with Ministers, and other issues were raised in debate. One of the problems was that change had become an article of faith for Ministers, and there was an unrelenting commitment to 24-hour opening which, it was believed, would end British binge drinking—everybody would be knocking back the odd Campari in delicate circumstances à la Tuscany. I never believed that that would be the case, and we could have avoided many of the problems that have confronted the Government in the past few weeks and months if Ministers had listened more carefully to representations made by MPs on behalf of their constituents, to organisations such as Alcohol Concern, to academics who had studied the topic, and to the police. In fairness to Ministers, some of the police criticisms of the Government proposals came a bit late in the day. I exhorted the police to object when the Licensing Bill was going through Parliament, but they would not do so, so they only have themselves to blame.
	I remain concerned about the extension of opening hours. To give a simple example, at one end of a street is the Dog and Duck, which still closes at 11 o'clock. In the middle of the street is a pub called the Pig and Whistle, which receives permission to close at 12 o'clock. A fancy wine bar at the other end of the street closes at 1 o'clock. Instead of being woken up and disturbed by people turning out at 11 o'clock from all three establishments, the residents are woken up at 11, 12 and 1 o'clock, with intermediate problems caused by shuffling and shouting as people move from the pub closing at 11 o'clock to the one closing at 12 o'clock and then to the wine bar closing at 1 o'clock.

Jim Knight: Will my right hon. Friend give way?

Frank Dobson: I do not have time, I am afraid, and I will prevent other Members from making speeches if I accept interventions.
	It is likely that the changes to opening hours will result in more booze being consumed. The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport has said—and I hope that this will be the case—that if
	"local people don't want 24 hour drinking or extended hours they won't have to have it—for the first time the Licensing Act puts control over licensing decisions in the hands of local people and their representatives."
	I hope that means that councils can reject applications for longer opening hours if local people object to them. In my constituency, where my right hon. Friend lives, there will be objections to most applications, so I hope that the council will reject them. I hope that the Standards Board for England will not complain if local councillors start to lobby the licensing committee to look after the interests of local people.

Andrew Turner: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Frank Dobson: I do not have time, I am afraid.
	We must remember that we are not dealing with the odd individual who runs the Rovers Return or the Queen Vic. We are usually dealing with large, well funded, nationwide chains and, in some cases, multinationals with lots of money that are likely to challenge court decisions, thus increasing councils' costs. We have been promised, however, that the fees charged will meet costs. I have made representations to Ministers, as have the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster and my hon. Friend the Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North. The fee levels have been revised and improved, but they will still leave Camden council with a £2 million deficit over the next three or four years, so it is clear that the fees will not meet costs, which is quite unacceptable. The Government should make a clear commitment so that if they have got it wrong, Camden council, Westminster city council and other councils that operate at a loss can recoup their losses. I choose my words carefully in saying that it would add injury to insult if people had to pay for the licensing system for all those sources of nuisance.
	There is one last point that I shall make. Several times we made representations to Ministers, drawing attention to the fact that many licences contain conditions and also undertakings, which are not quite as powerful as the conditions. We pressed Ministers to require someone applying for a new licence to disclose to the new organisation—the council—the undertakings, as well as the conditions, because many of those undertakings protected local people. Ministers rejected that. If there are to be the revisions in the law that have been proposed recently, I hope they include the requirement that applicants disclose to the council not just the conditions, but the undertakings that were introduced to protect people. That will be a step forward.
	I hope that in future the Government will learn and that, instead of listening to ghastly organisations like the Portman Group, which is just a front for the booze industry, they will pay more attention to what elected Members of Parliament and local councillors are saying to protect their people.

Don Foster: I am delighted to follow the right hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson). Perhaps many more of us should have been listening rather earlier to his remarks. I hope he will consider me a repenting sinner. As the Liberal Democrats support the motion in the name of the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis), the House should be aware that we are being consistent with the concerns that we expressed during the passage of the Licensing Act 2003, and with our decision to vote against both the Second and Third Readings of that Act.
	During the passage of the Act, we had some concerns about the Government's motivation for introducing the proposals. Reference has been made to that famous text message,
	"Cldnt give a XXXX 4 last ordrs? Vote Labour 4 xtra time."
	We wondered whether the motivation was to garner the youth vote, rather than to address the real problem of binge drinking that afflicts the nation. There are now real concerns on the part of the public and many hon. Members about various provisions of the Licensing Act. There is clearly not a great deal of public support for the provisions. A recent BBC poll for the "Breakfast" programme showed that 67 per cent. of people thought the legislation would increase the trouble on our streets and 62 per cent. thought the Act likely to make Britain a worse place in which to live.
	If the right controls and the right support mechanisms are put in place, flexibility in our licensing laws could help address the problems of binge drinking. Our concerns are that we do not have the right support measures and controls in place. For example, as I shall amplify, we do not believe that the powers of local authorities are adequate. We do not believe that support mechanisms—for example, the availability of public transport—are in place, and we continue to be worried about the fee structure so recently announced. However, we acknowledge that if we could develop the continental café culture, it could have some benefits.
	We welcomed from the beginning the increased powers that the Act gives to police and others to close down institutions—pubs, clubs and others—which experience significant problems, but as others have pointed out, we do not seem to be using even existing legislation to combat such problems. Examples have been given of provisions that are not being fully utilised, and a couple of other examples serve to illustrate the point. Only 12 landlords on average each year since 1997 have been prosecuted for allowing drunken or riotous behaviour on their premises. In the same period only 11 people in total have been prosecuted for buying drinks for friends who were incapable as a result of binge drinking. We welcome some of the increased powers, but we hope that the existing powers will be more effectively used.

Kevin Brennan: Will the hon. Gentleman clarify his party's position? He said that he would vote for the motion, which states that
	"extended opening hours will have an adverse serious effect on the health of the nation."
	So are the Liberal Democrats against extended opening hours?

Don Foster: I hope I have made it clear that we believe that with the right control mechanisms and support mechanisms in place, extended opening hours may help. Our argument is that at present the support and control mechanisms that we believe are necessary are not in place. Without them extended opening hours will lead to increased harm.

Jim Knight: Will the hon. Gentleman sketch out what he thinks should be done? For example, he said that the existing powers were not being used sufficiently. When I speak to the police in my area about that, they say they do not have the resources to enforce those powers. They will welcome the new fees that have been announced and the new approach in the Act, which allows the cost of enforcement and inspection to be included in the fees, rather than just the administration costs for the licence.

Don Foster: Of course I intend to sketch out what we believe should happen. There would not be much point in making a speech if all I did was to criticise. I shall make some positive suggestions. The hon. Gentleman is right to draw attention to the fact that his police, and no doubt police all over the country, are deeply concerned that if they do not have increased resources, they will not be able to carry out the policing that is necessary. The increased fees that have been proposed will provide additional resources only to the local authorities to enable them to do the monitoring. We have still to see where the additional resources for the police are to come from. The Secretary of State may wish to say more about that when she winds up.
	The debate has been unfairly characterised as being about 24-hour drinking. We recognise that the vast majority of pubs are unlikely to want to move towards that. The powers that pubs were given during the new year period to open for as much as 36 hours were not taken up by a single pub, as far as I am aware. The Home Secretary was right to point out that the debate is not just about pubs and clubs. With more than 50 per cent. of alcohol being purchased from supermarkets and other off-licence establishments, we need to address that as well, as is acknowledged in some of the measures being introduced.
	In my constituency, Bath, a recent newspaper article sums up the nature of the problem that we face. On 18 December last year The Bath Chronicle reported:
	"Insp Paul Mogg said yesterday that he and his officers could no longer keep pace with the rising level of drink-fuelled violence in the city each weekend.
	Insp Mogg said that revellers and his own officers were being assaulted on the streets, and many residents were too scared to venture out in the evening.
	And he said Bath's reputation was being tarnished by armies of drunks who caused 'mayhem' on Fridays and Saturdays."
	Other Members have referred to the numerous statistics about the binge drinking problem in this country. The Secretary of State rightly points out that these are problems that exist now, before the introduction of the new legislation. Reference has been made to the health costs, the impact on crime, and the problems that face many employers because of days of work being missed. That represents a great deal of human misery and a significant cost to the country, estimated by the Government to be in the region of £20 billion a year. We need to focus more on the problem in relation to young people. As we have already heard, British teenagers are drinking far more than any of their European counterparts.

Charles Hendry: I know that it is Liberal Democrat policy to allow people to vote at the age of 16, because the Liberal Democrats believe that that is the age at which people become adults. Does the hon. Gentleman therefore also believe that that is the age at which people should be able to buy alcohol, and if not, why the inconsistency?

Don Foster: The hon. Gentleman rightly points out that we have a belief that the age of 16 should be consistently used for all issues, including the one that he is talking about. Our saying that 16-year-olds should be able to buy alcohol does not mean, however, that we are advocating that they should become involved in binge drinking. It is worrying that the figures demonstrate that about 33,000 children are admitted to hospital every year because of alcohol-related illnesses. In another debate on the same issue in Westminster Hall earlier today, my hon. Friend the Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) referred to the situation in the Grampian health authority, where two young people under 15 are admitted every single week with acute alcohol poisoning.
	There are real issues, and the question is whether the 2003 Act as it currently stands and is intended to be implemented will work. When the legislation was introduced, many of us believed more passionately than now that there was a chance that it would work. As has been said, much of the information provided by the Government told only half the story.

Kevin Brennan: Will the hon. Gentleman confirm that it is Lib Dem policy to legalise drinking at the age of 16? Does he think that that will contribute to a reduction in binge drinking?

Don Foster: The answer is yes. I do not think that I could explain the position more clearly. I have already set it out to the hon. Member for Wealden (Charles Hendry). I am clear about that policy, but I have no reason to accept any suggestion from the hon. Member for Cardiff, West (Kevin Brennan) that it would lead to an increase in binge drinking if we get the correct measures in place. Our concern is that the legislation does not provide us with the complete panoply of measures that we believe are necessary.
	We were sold a false prospectus by the Government during the passage of the legislation in terms, for instance, of whether the police supported it. We now know that very many police are deeply concerned. The Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis, Sir John Stevens, made that clear when he recently said:
	"The move towards 24-hour drinking needs to be slowed down. The fact that large groups of people will be coming out at 3am or 4am will mean that we have to man the streets to ensure they behave."
	We now know that even some of the information that was to be included in the alcohol harm reduction strategy and that would have been helpful subsequent consideration of the issues was removed. According to the Daily Mail, that includes this initial warning:
	"Relaxing availability increases general harm whether through more outlets (Finland), denser outlets (California), or longer hours (Western Australia)."
	The consensus has certainly moved away from support for the measure. We have also heard that there were deep concerns even in the Cabinet. The Prime Minister has already referred to binge drinking as the British disease, and as we have heard, the former Home Secretary described the proposals as a leap in the dark.
	If we were given a dodgy dossier, however, the real issue is whether we are being given a sensible set of proposals that will really work. We are being told that local authorities will have significant powers to deal with the issues, but the more we study the Bill, the more we see its deep flaws. For example, at the very last minute, the Government accepted Liberal Democrat proposals that there should be some measures in place to address the issue of cumulative impact. The idea of special saturation policies was referred to. It does not appear in the Bill, but it is included in the guidance. Nevertheless, that opportunity is a rather thin one. For example, the very same guidance says:
	"nothing in this Guidance should be taken as indicating that any requirement of licensing law or any other law may be overridden".
	It does not give particularly special powers.
	When local authorities such as mine, Bath and North East Somerset, considered whether to introduce a special saturation policy, they realised that there were two problems. First, in the area immediately outside the saturation policy areas a green light would be given to all sorts of developments that might be unwelcome to local residents. Secondly, and more importantly, the authorities recognised that there was a real possibility of legal challenge. Indeed, Andrew McNeill, director of the Institute of Alcohol Studies, recently said:
	"I think it's going to be a legal minefield".
	Local authorities are not very keen to pursue matters with the power of the big breweries that might challenge them and the legal costs that are likely to follow.
	There are also concerns about the guidance relating to temporary event licences, as it will make it very difficult for local people to do anything about raves in their area. As the Secretary of State will know, only the police are allowed to object, and they have only 48 hours in which to do so. A rave organiser can simply put a letter through a rural police station letterbox on a Friday, and there will be no time whatever for action to be taken.

Eric Pickles: I agree with the hon. Gentleman on that point, but I want to go back to his previous point. A number of local authorities have attempted to strike a balance between licensees and the local population. Does he appreciate that those agreements will now mean nothing unless the Government remove the "must" obligation to grant permission unless there is an objection?

Don Foster: I was about to come to that point. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman—perhaps he will have an opportunity to develop his argument later, if he catches your eye, Madam Deputy Speaker—will be well aware that, because of the problems that he mentions, the magistrates courts may become clogged up with all sorts of applications and we may have difficulty in implementing the measures anyway. I was going to make that point in a minute, but I am grateful to him for giving me the chance to do so now.
	The local flexibility that the Government talk about is very one-sided. The Government say that, on licensing, they strongly recommend
	"that statements of policy recognise that longer licensing hours"
	are
	"necessary to reduce the friction of late fast food outlets, taxi ranks and other sources of transport which lead to disorder and disturbance".
	Earlier, the right hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras asked the Secretary of State whether it would be possible for a local authority to say no to any increases. The problem is that local authorities are required to have a licensing policy saying that they recognise that increasing licensing hours is a good idea. That makes it very difficult for them to follow the line that he might want to suggest. To add insult to injury, the guidance on the special saturation policy areas that local authorities might wish to introduce states specifically that no rule can be introduced in those areas saying that all the pubs must close at the same time. The guidance forbids local authorities from doing that. When he asked the Secretary of State about that issue, she should have said that such an approach was not possible.
	There are also concerns about the role of local councillors. How can it be right for a local councillor who represents a particular area of a town or city where there is a serious problem to be told that he or she cannot serve on the licensing committee considering licences in that area? Frankly, that is complete madness.
	The fees themselves are another problem. The Secretary of State has introduced a new set of fees. Many people will welcome them, but it is worth pointing out that the fees on which she consulted extensively and those that were introduced are significantly different. The new fees have come as a huge shock to the pubs and breweries, and various other related organisations. I am not arguing about whether they are right or wrong, but the publication of the fees within days of the first named day, 7 February, makes it hugely difficult for those involved to decide what action to take. At the same time, many bodies—not least small sports clubs—are deeply worried that the fee levels are far too high. All those arrangements have been introduced at very short notice.

Desmond Swayne: On small clubs, my constituent, Mr. John Crosthwaite-Eyre, who is treasurer of Dunwood Manor golf club, has informed me that the price of the club's licence will increase from £16 to £1,145, which is simply outrageous.

Don Foster: The hon. Gentleman's example is one of many that will undoubtedly be cited. I will give him advance notice of how the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport will respond to his point: she will say that the Government have given local amateur sports clubs new powers to obtain additional money and that only 2,000 clubs have taken up the offer, although many thousands of them could do so. When the Government introduced that concession on rates, however, it was intended to provide additional support to sports clubs to help them carry out sporting activities. The tune seems to have changed, and sports clubs must use that benefit, if they take it up, to pay the increased fees to which the hon. Gentleman has alluded, which cannot be right.
	The Government have recently introduced a set of new sticking-plaster measures. Stung by the criticisms, they have brought in proposals, which are only proposals, for alcohol disorder zones, a "three strikes and you're out" scheme and charges, which might or might not be made, to certain pubs and clubs to help pay for policing, which would be similar to the situation with football clubs. If the package of measures is going to work, we need to know where the new measures, which may or may not be sensible, are going and how they fit into the overall picture.
	The motion calls for further time, which makes a great deal of sense: time to consider the new proposals; time to consider how we can improve education about alcohol misuse; time to consider how we can provide more financial support for those working to combat alcohol misuse; time to consider unit labelling on all drinks; time for the Government and the industry to consider how they can tackle unacceptable promotions, which many companies used to run and which many companies are, I am delighted to stay, stopping under the voluntary code; time for more training for health workers; time for the Government to introduce their promise to make pubs a single use class—we have still not had the details—under our planning legislation; and, perhaps crucially, time to gather benchmarking statistics, which my noble Friend Lord Avebury proposed in another place, to allow us to assess the Bill at a future date. I genuinely believe that the public in this country do not want to see the immediate implementation of the legislation. At the least, they want to see a delay while we get some of the other measures sorted out, increase support for the police and local councils and provide local councils with greater flexibility.
	I hope that the Secretary of State will comment on this final point. This House has welcomed the concept of pre-legislative scrutiny, which has been tried on a number of occasions. There is growing talk about post-legislative scrutiny being carried out by both Houses, and I hope that the Government will be willing to introduce the concept of post-legislative scrutiny whenever the Bill is implemented.

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. May I remind all hon. Members that Mr. Speaker has imposed a 12-minute limit on all speeches by Back Benchers?

Jim Knight: I refer hon. Members to my entry in the Register of Members' Interests in relation to my chairing the all-party leisure group. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster), who made some good points about sports clubs and the presumption in the guidance, which I have discussed privately with the Secretary of State. He sat on the fence on some other matters and I would have liked more detail on what he wants the Government to do. I was startled by his party's policy on extending the legal age at which one can buy alcohol to 16.
	The hon. Member for Bath was less confused than the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis), who wants to suspend implementation of the Licensing Act 2003, but who intervened on the Home Secretary to say that he thinks that we should liberalise the licensing laws once we have implemented measures to stop binge drinking, which is the approach adopted by the Government and in the 2003 Act.

Don Foster: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman and I can join in recommending to the Government that full-blown implementation should not go ahead and that those areas that are interested should be given the opportunity to pilot some of the measures.

Jim Knight: I shall resist the temptation to join the hon. Gentleman in advocating that suggestion. The problems with binge drinking are severe and we should act now. The Licensing Act 2003 provides a balanced range of measures that we should get on with. I agree with Rick Naylor of the Police Superintendents Association, who told Radio 4's "PM" programme on 29 April last year that
	"The Superintendents' Association have always been in favour of relaxing licensing laws and bringing them into the twenty-first century, and it is slightly disappointing we can't get this piece of legislation implemented sooner, because I think it will have an effect on violence in the streets."

Desmond Swayne: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Jim Knight: I am only allowed to give way twice, so this is the last time.

Desmond Swayne: Given the hon. Gentleman's admission about the binge-drinking culture, is he not ashamed of the text message that his party put out before the last election:
	"Cldnt give a XXXX 4  last ordrs? Vote Labour 4 xtra time"?
	Is that an incitement to café culture? Is that a measured contribution to dealing with binge drinking?

Jim Knight: I am happy with the idea that the vast majority of our electors are responsible drinkers, including the vast majority of young people. I do not want to label young people as irresponsible. The irresponsible minority who cannot handle their drink and who cause alcohol-related violence must be dealt with, and the 2003 Act gives the police and local councils the powers to do that.
	I was a member of the Standing Committee that scrutinised the 2003 Act, which is based on sound logic. Alcohol-fuelled violence is a problem on our streets and we need to liberalise the laws for the many, while clamping down on the few who abuse them. We are not discussing 24-hour drinking but flexible drinking. The British Beer and Pub Association conducted an extensive survey of its members and did not find anyone who wants to open for 24 hours. It is unfortunate that some people are getting on the bandwagon and labelling the policy as 24-hour drinking to score points with their friends at the Daily Mail. Who is the leader of the Opposition in this country? Is it the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) or the editor of the Daily Mail? However, that is not the subject of this afternoon's debate.
	My view has been informed by accompanying the police in Weymouth late on a Friday night and through into Saturday morning to observe the behaviour of some of the irresponsible members of the community, who mix with the many responsible people who enjoy their leisure time in Weymouth town centre. I observed the activity in Weymouth town centre on the extensive CCTV system, which is funded by this Government, and on the streets with police officers.
	In Weymouth, there are pinch points between 11 pm and 11.30 pm, when the pubs chuck out, after 2 am, when the nightclubs chuck out, and in Westham road, where late-night refreshment establishments are concentrated, where people get kebabs, pizzas and chips and where the concentration of people towards the end of the evening and early in the morning causes a lot of disturbance and inevitably leads to fights, which can occur over taxis. I have spoken to the police, met local licensing officers and discussed the matter with taxi drivers in my constituency and they all agree that the most important way in which to tackle alcohol-fuelled violence is to remove the pinch points. That is why a flexible approach is the right one in dealing with alcohol-related antisocial behaviour.
	The police want the resources to deal with the problem properly. That is why I welcome my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State's announcement of the fees structure, particularly the multiplier. That means that town centre licensed premises will have to pay considerably more than those with lower rateable values, so the full cost of inspection and enforcement can be recouped from those who make profits from selling alcohol and the community no will no longer have to pay through its council tax.
	The Act introduces a complete policy that tackles late night refreshment as well as licensing. That is welcome. Licensing officers and police in Swanage in my constituency have told me that one or two establishments selling kebabs and the like, where people congregate after the pubs have shut, are the main cause of civil disorder and public nuisance.
	The Act contains many powers that balance the liberalisation that I have advocated in respect of reducing the pinch points. They include the power of the police to close premises down for 24 hours where they see disorder, the inclusion of late night refreshments and the ability to introduce a special policy, although I have some concerns about that along the lines articulated by the hon. Member for Bath. I welcome the introduction of personal licences, whereby a licence is required not only for the premises but for the person who is responsible in that operation. That licence equates to their personal livelihood, which they put at risk if they flout the law. That is a powerful sanction.
	At the heart of the approach taken in the Act is the principle of local accountability. People now have the power to object to their elected representatives, and if their elected representatives choose not to listen, they have the power to vote them out of office at the next election.

Andrew Turner: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Jim Knight: I have given way twice and used up all my available time, although of course I would love to listen once again to the wisdom of the hon. Gentleman, having heard so many of his wise words on all sorts of bizarre things in Standing Committee.
	The Act also gives the police enhanced powers to object and introduces increased fines for certain people who are drunk and for those who serve children under the age of 18.
	The aims of the new policy, which are stated at the beginning of the Act and in every licensing policy that every council will introduce, are to reduce public nuisance and disorder and to reduce harm to children. Every council has a responsibility to implement a policy that fulfils those aims, with which I am sure that every Member in the House agrees.
	The views of the police were expressed clearly when we debated the legislation, but they seem, like many others, to have come under the influence of our friends at the Daily Mail. At the time of the White Paper, the Association of Chief Police Officers said:
	"ACPO has been consistent in its support of the removal of rigid permitted hours and the introduction of more flexible opening hours because of the strong link to crime and disorder."
	Chris Fox, speaking on Radio 5 Live on 25 October, said:
	"Well, let's get it straight, we're not against twenty four hour licensing, that's not the issue at all. What we're saying at the moment is that if we continue to run licences for twenty four hours in the way that we're running them currently we're going to have more street disorder, more drunkenness, more bad behaviour over a longer period."
	Voices in the police are clearly saying that the status quo is not working. We all know that that is the case and that we have to take action now, and that is why a delay in the implementation of the Act would be a mistake. I do not understand why Opposition Members are arguing for a such delay, which would deny to the police and local authorities new powers to act against the problems that we are experiencing in our town centres.
	In my constituency, I am working on a campaign, which I have discussed with Feargal Sharkey and others on the Live Music Forum, to encourage licensed premises to promote more live music now that they will no longer have to pay extra to do so. That might be popular not only with our younger voters but with voters of all ages, as I saw on Sunday afternoon when I attended, as did more than 600 others, a fundraising concert in Weymouth for victims of the tsunami disaster, where we listened to the likes of Billy Bragg. About £20,000 was raised by the many music lovers in my constituency, who want the Act to be implemented as soon as possible so that we can encourage more venues to promote live music.
	I urge hon. Members—and even right hon. Members, although I do not know if they will all listen—to support the Government amendment and wholeheartedly reject the opportunistic, bandwagoning approach of the Conservatives.

George Young: It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for South Dorset (Jim Knight). He did not go out of his way to cultivate the support of the readers and editor of the Daily Mail, which might have been unwise given his small majority.
	I do not normally contribute to debates on licensing, and feel a little like a stranger who has wandered into a bar where a few regulars are exchanging familiar arguments and anecdotes. Nevertheless, I want briefly to make two points. The first echoes what the hon. Member for South Dorset said about his experiences while out with the police. I spent 30 days on the police service parliamentary scheme. Several of those days and nights were spent in Southampton inspecting exactly the problem that we have been discussing. That is when I first came across the phrase, "the night-time economy." To begin with, I was suspicious of what I regarded as a new Labour phrase. However, it is true that Southampton has a night-time economy that complements its day-time economy and which will probably, with the passage of time, become more important as people have more money and leisure.
	That economy relates not only to pubs and clubs, but to food outlets and minicabs and, going back a stage, to clothes, shoes and fashion accessories. There is an industry there of which we should be cognisant, and as a Conservative who is responsive to market forces, my overall instincts are not to stand in the way of such an expression of consumer power. It is important that those of us in the House of Commons, which is slightly detached from young voters, should not say anything that implies that we do not understand how young people like to use their leisure. They like to pub and club, at times of the day and night when most of us are asleep, and the vast majority do so entirely inoffensively. Indeed, when I went round the pubs and clubs in Southampton, the vast majority of people, including several off-duty policemen and women, were enjoying themselves and acting entirely responsibly.
	I was struck by the all-pervasiveness of CCTV, not only at fixed points run by the local authority but as mobile cameras operated by the police. Young people should realise that, if they commit an offence in a city centre, it is almost certainly recorded on CCTV somewhere and will be used in evidence. On one occasion, I saw a young man being chased by potential assailants just outside the city centre. He headed for a spot that he knew was covered by CCTV, and the moment he got there his assailants stopped chasing him. Although CCTV may be criticised on libertarian or displacement grounds, I am all in favour of it as regards bringing law and order to the city centre. I was worried not so much by the alcohol as by the noise, which struck me as far more likely to injure people's health than alcohol. Several of the young people were not drinking alcohol at all, but soft drinks.
	Of course there are problems, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) rightly said. There are some very aggressive people, and I was interested to see how well informed many of them are as to exactly how far they can go with the police without getting arrested. They know that they can abuse the police without getting arrested because they have to be cautioned first. Once they are arrested, it is clear that everything that people say about police bureaucracy and filling forms is true. When we took one inebriated young man to the custody suite, the policeman had to fill in a form before he could be taken in. One of the questions was: "What is your religion?" If one asks a man inflamed with alcohol what his religion is, one is likely to spark a theological discussion in which everybody else in the custody suite feels free to join. I am sure that one could consider more critically the number of questions on the form that people have to answer before they are allowed to go through. In one case, a man, once arrested, had to be detained under the Mental Health Act 1983. That meant that the policeman who arrested him had to spend the whole of the rest of his beat in the cell sitting next to him. He was therefore off duty.
	Many policemen who should be policing the city centres do not do so because they are back at the police station, filling in forms and getting tied up with bureaucracy. There is enormous scope to streamline that. If people are charged, the defence solicitors are up to every trick in the book. Even though they know that their client is guilty, they will advise him to plead not guilty in case the witnesses or the police do not turn up. If they do, the plea is switched to guilty in the hope of a lenient sentence. Much can therefore be done in the existing framework to improve the effectiveness of policing.
	My second point is based on what happens in Andover. The brewing industry appears to focus on the city centres. In my part of Hampshire, it drives up the rents of the village pubs, which are closing, and opens fresh outlets in the city and town centres. I ask it to consider what it is doing. Viable village pubs become unviable if the rents are jacked up in the rent review. We have lost the Hare and Hounds outside Andover, and other pubs are threatened.
	Yesterday, I spoke to the landlord of the Southampton Arms in Andover, where we have pubwatch, which I am sure that other hon. Members have in their constituencies. There are some 26 individuals on the Andover pubwatch scheme. I found it interesting that the police implement it in Andover. The police rather than the landlord impart the good news to the individual that he is banned from every pub in Andover. That obviously removes a point of friction between the customer and the landlord.
	The application forms for the new regime that starts on 7 February are not available at the local authority in Andover. The people to whom I spoke yesterday believe that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport is responsible for ensuring that the forms are available. It is unlikely that any pubs in Andover will open for 24 hours but the position may be different in other constituencies.
	Some people are reluctant to go to the town centre, especially at weekends. To deal with that, the police are piloting a new strategy for eight weeks. It has two key personalities. The first is PC Ken Crosby, who is based on a bicycle. That enables him to access the many alleyways and pedestrianised areas of the town. He has CCTV on his helmet and his job is to identify potential trouble makers—groups of young people who could cause difficulty. He is backed up by a 4x4, which has CCTV front and rear. It also has three directional microphones that pick up sounds 100 yd away and is backed up by a community patrol vehicle.
	Another key personality is Amara, a black Labrador, who sniffs out a wide range of drugs. She can smell crack cocaine at 40 ft and she examines people who stand in line for the clubs. To keep her on her toes, there are two stooges with 10 g of cocaine somewhere in Andover. They ensure that she is alert.
	The new scheme covers the off-licences as well as licensed premises. As we have heard, off-licences are often the problem. It is supported by the local authority licensing officer, the community wardens and the fire service. It focuses roughly on 2 am when there is a mass exodus and concentrates on the taxi ranks and fast food outlets.
	The initial evidence from the pilot scheme is encouraging. Proactive arrests early in the evening send a clear signal to the rest of the community. There is some evidence that the licensees are acting more responsibly and that revellers are more aware of what is going on.
	Although the House needs to tackle big strategic issues such as whether it is the right time to change the regime and the impact on consumption of longer or more flexible licensing hours, whatever the regime, much could and should be done now. My experience of Andover shows that genuine progress can be made through the police and local authorities working together and sending out a strong signal to minimise the irresponsible minority who threaten the pleasures of the vast law-abiding majority.

John Grogan: It is a great pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young), who clearly had a couple of informative nights out in Southampton and Andover. I learned a great deal from listening to his account of good practice in his area.
	I support the Government. My Whip would probably say, "About time, too." I support them on this occasion for several reasons. First, although I share views with the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster) on a range of issues, such as gambling and broadcasting, I was surprised that he committed himself to drinking in pubs by 16-year-olds. Whatever the differences between the parties, I believed that there was a fair consensus that the law on under-age drinking had not been properly enforced, as the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) said at the beginning of the debate.
	It was announced last week that, for the first time, it may become an offence for someone who is under 18 to try to purchase alcohol at a bar. Many people in the industry and in government have put much effort into the pass scheme, which will permit the use of a commonly recognised proof-of-age card throughout the country. That will be popular with many 18-year-olds who experience social embarrassment if they have to prove their age. As a friendly gesture towards the hon. Member for Bath, I ask him to reflect on his view because I have seen what some of my Whips and perhaps less scrupulous friends have done with Liberal promises in the past. I fear that the hon. Gentleman has given a hostage to fortune on 16-year-olds drinking.
	I want to put the subject of the debate in context. At the weekend, I looked at a picture the like of which we have all become familiar with in recent weeks on television and in newspapers. It depicts several young men fighting in the background, an older man falling over with a drink still in his hand and some young women who are clearly inebriated. It was an engraving by Hogarth in 1761 entitled "Gin Lane". I do not say that to diminish the current problem—we clearly have a problem with binge drinking, which has been graphically described—but to illustrate the fact that the problem has occupied the House many times over the years.
	I contend that we have had a century-long experiment in fixed opening hours and closing times for pubs, ever since Lloyd George proclaimed when he introduced the liquor licensing laws that we were fighting three enemies: the Hun, the Austrians and the drink, and that the greatest was the drink. Since then, our licensing laws have been framed in that context. I believe that they encourage binge drinking. The various early-day motions that support the Government were not generally inspired by big pub companies or civil servants with links to such companies. I shall not embarrass hon. Members by reading out the names of some who signed the early-day motions in the previous Session and the previous Parliament.
	The early-day motions were largely inspired by CAMRA, the Campaign for Real Ale. It is unfair to characterise its members as middle-aged men with beards. Its current president is a woman and it represents beer drinkers of all ages. However, it does not represent the cutting-edge youth drinking market yet it supports more flexible opening hours. The right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire mentioned the phrase "the night-time economy." He is probably right that it is a bit of a new Labour phrase but the words have tripped off my lips occasionally.
	The problem with the night-time economy is, as many hon. Members have pointed out, that it is often the province of the young. The only places that can stay open after 11 pm are those with entertainment licences. A bar or a club can stay open after 11 pm only if it makes noise. An ordinary pub cannot stay open except in special circumstances. That is nonsense and distorts the evening economy. It stops people who come out of cinemas and theatres going for that last drink.
	Some chief constables have latterly said that they are against the new measures and my chief constable in North Yorkshire has made such signals. However, when I asked her local police whether that means that they will clamp down on all the lock-ins in villages and suburban areas about which they know, they say that they will not because they do not cause problems. The situation should be regularised, because the law should not be flouted in that way. If a well managed pub in a village or suburb is not causing a nuisance to anyone, why should it not stay open later if that meets a demand? Such regularisation would have a civilising effect, as it has in Scotland and in the Isle of Man. The Isle of Man is perhaps not the most socially liberal part of Europe, but it reformed its licensing hours two or three years ago in much the same way as we are doing. That resulted in a decrease in violent crime in the capital, Douglas, which had been having problems until then.

Andrew Turner: I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way, although I am not intervening on him because of his reference to another offshore island. Will he go back for a moment to his recollections of the views expressed by CAMRA during the passage of the Licensing Bill, and compare them with those of the Association of Chief Police Officers? Hon. Members across the House know that the problem is not that we did not want reform, but that we wanted reform that was well thought through and would achieve the objectives that the Government said that it would. In Committee, we were told that licensing authorities could not reject licences unless to do so was in line with the licensing objectives in the Bill. Those objectives, narrow as they were on Second Reading, were even narrower when the Bill came out of Committee, because Labour Members, and the Minister in particular, rejected our amendments to widen them.

John Grogan: In regard to the licensing objectives, why else would a licensing authority reject an application for a late licence if a pub was not causing disorder, nuisance or harm to children? Some of the powers to do with saturation were, in fact, widened. My right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson) made progress in those areas. A pub has to pass quite a tough test to get later opening hours and I think that many will apply for them and not get them, because they will not pass that tough test. The hon. Gentleman also mentioned ACPO. The presence of its representative, Chris Fox, at the press conference last week was illustrative.
	There has been creative tension between the Home Office and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport in recent months, but the package that was announced last week has great merit. I urge the industry not to mount blanket opposition to it, but to examine it carefully. Most small village pubs, for example, will not pay higher fees than was originally intended. They will not pay for extra policing. The pubs that will pay extra fees as a result of last week's announcement will tend to be the larger pubs and clubs, and they will probably end up paying much the same as they did under the old regime, if they take into account the effect of public entertainment licences.
	The alcohol disorder zones will probably be used only as a last resort, because town and city councils will want to try to solve any problem with the industry before declaring such a zone. Obviously, it would not do much for the image of a town to admit that creating such a zone was the only way of solving the problem, but it is nevertheless a useful power of last resort for councils.
	I also urge Ministers to look carefully at some of the existing powers. Exclusion orders exist under the present law, for example. They allow anyone convicted of a violent offence in a pub to be excluded not only from the pub in question but from others within a certain distance, if the magistrates so wish. I and others have urged Home Office Ministers for some time to ask magistrates to consider automatically imposing an exclusion order in such circumstances. That move is backed by publicans and the trade unions that represent people working in pubs.
	I want to return to the fundamental point about whether we should postpone the introduction of more flexible hours or experiment with them, as the hon. Member for Bath and others have suggested. I am against experiments or pilots because I cannot imagine anything worse than having just six or seven towns or cities being given the authority for much later licensing. Some young British people behave badly on holidays abroad because they regard drinking after 11 pm as exceptional and different. Pilot schemes here could have the same effect.
	We suffer from a similar effect in parts of central London, where people think that they can behave badly because late night drinking is outside the norm. It should be very much the norm to be able to have a drink after 11 pm in civilised circumstances if people are behaving well. There should be nothing wrong with that. It will take a while to change our drinking culture, which goes back a long way, but that principle is an important one. I am anxious, as is the Police Superintendents Association, to give councils—which are much better placed than magistrates to deal with these matters—these powers urgently, so that we can regulate our night-time economy.

Andrew Turner: The hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for South Dorset referred to the role of councillors. Does he accept that it is unreasonable that, if a resident who lives next door to a pub speaks to their councillor about that pub—or even if they do not—that councillor is disbarred from being involved in any decision relating to the licensing of the pub, even if he represents a ward as big as some of those in Birmingham, which have 20,000 voters?

John Grogan: My understanding is that nothing can prevent a councillor, or an MP, from making representations to a licensing committee on behalf of their constituents. However, just as we would not expect a representative of a particular ward to take part in certain planning decisions, equally we must ask whether the councillor in the hon. Gentleman's example would be the best placed person to take such a decision. On the whole, I do not think that they would be.

Eric Pickles: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

John Grogan: No, I want to bring my remarks to a close.
	In confessional mode, I agree that the text message was not a product of Millbank's finest hour. It gave entirely the wrong signals at the last election, because it implied that the main beneficiaries of licensing reform would be the young. I would argue that that is not the case. Whatever happens with licensing reform, young people will be out and about on the town at midnight or 1 am. The main beneficiaries of the new Licensing Act will be those in the more mature market—which is well represented in the Chamber today—who will, for the first time, be able to find somewhere conducive to having a drink after 11 pm. Their very presence in our town and city centres will have a civilising influence. The other main beneficiaries will be residents who, for the first time in a long while, will be able to make representations to their local councillors about their immediate situation, instead of having to go to a rather remote magistrates court.
	I want to end with the perspective not of the big brewers, CAMRA or the consumer, but of a barmaid who wrote to me some time ago to describe what happens when she calls last orders. She said:
	"You spend hours, days, weeks cultivating a relationship with the regulars, charming newcomers, learning to pour that perfect pint, yet, the moment you ring that bell, it all goes out the window. Suddenly all eyes are upon you, then all eyes are upon the clock and the muttering begins: 'That clock's fast', 'Is it that time already?', 'Give us a takeout', 'I've just put two quid in the jukebox', 'Down it, we'll squeeze one more in.'
	And the bar that you have served so efficiently all evening becomes THE place to be, no joking, no social niceties now. It is each for their own, digging that elbow space, thrusting fivers in your face, no-one is going to risk returning to their mates empty handed . . . You have to wander round the pub forcing people to down their drinks, shouting, 'Come on, drink up, folks. Can I have your glasses please?' In under half an hour you have gone from being a right laugh and everybody's friend to public enemy number one."
	I honestly cannot believe that the English and the Welsh are alone among the civilised peoples of Europe. Are we the only people who cannot cope with having a drink in the right environment and not annoying their neighbours after 11 o'clock at night? I enthusiastically support the Government's amendment.

Eric Pickles: It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Selby (Mr. Grogan), who suggested that some of us in the Chamber are mature. I suppose that many of us are approaching maturity, but sadly from the wrong direction. He took us on a tour of Hogarth's London and the gin joints, and mentioned the great thundering voice of David Lloyd George, who may be starting to rotate at the thought that his once great party now advocates the extension of drinking to 16-year-olds.
	I want to make a relatively narrow point—putting aside the rights and wrongs of 24-hour drinking—on implementation and the effect on local authorities, on which several Members have touched briefly. I was very much in favour of the transfer of powers from magistrates to local authorities. Councils have a responsibility for crime reduction partnerships, with specific responsibilities for tackling youth disorder. Licensing in many ways has some commonality with planning, and most importantly, councils are democratically accountable to the population. It was therefore a brave decision, as it was in the face of opposition from many in the drinks industry.
	I cannot understand, however, what the point was of giving all those powers if they were to be made worthless once the guidance was produced. Under the regulations, unless an objection is made to a licence application, it will automatically be approved in full without amendment. The point that the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster) made about raves is a good one. Local ward councillors are considered to be biased in favour of local residents and will be prevented from voting on late licences within their ward. They can object only if they live in the vicinity, in which case they must declare a prejudicial interest, which prevents them from attending any licensing application hearing. Therefore, it is somehow bad for democratically elected people to be biased in favour of their populations.
	I confess that I am biased in favour of the electors of Brentwood and Ongar. I doubt whether many Members of Parliament are not biased in favour of their electorate. That does not blind me to individual justice or the merits of an individual case. A balance must be struck—it happens in decisions made in this Chamber and in council chambers across the country—between individual rights and democratic accountability. The guidelines remove the one person who probably knows the local ward better than anyone, and to whom local residents look for guidance and leadership. That person is not only removed from voting, but cannot give evidence at any hearing. The representative nature of democracy, to which the right hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson) referred, is wholly pushed to one side because of the new guidelines.
	Councils are being advised that under the Human Rights Act 1998 they should not allow local ward councillors to sit and consider applications for their own wards, because of bias against pubs and clubs. That prejudice will lead to some strange circumstances. For example, Councillor Smith lives in Applegate ward, but two miles from the public house subject to the application. Councillor Black lives in the adjoining Mayflower ward, but one mile from the pub. Councillor Black can vote, but Councillor Smith cannot. There is no logic to that. Only in the never-never land of the Human Rights Act or the guidance would electoral divisions be regarded as natural catchment areas for licensed premises.
	Parish councils will not be recognised as objectors, but residents associations will. The guidance specifically defines interested parties as
	"a person living in the vicinity of the premises in question; a body representing persons living in that vicinity, for example a residents' association; a person involved in business in the vicinity of the premises in question; and a body representing persons involved in such businesses, for example, a trade association."
	It is unlikely that many residents associations are coterminous with parish councils—I am not aware of any. Again, that marginalises councillors. Councillors will not be able to object to the saturation of pubs and clubs if existing premises apply to extend their licensing hours. They will not even be able to introduce a staggering of opening hours. The guidance says:
	"Above all, licensing authorities should not fix predetermined closing times for particular areas."
	It continues:
	"Licensing authorities should not seek to engineer 'staggered closing times' by setting quotas for particular closing times".
	That was supposed to be the great advantage of the new licensing laws.
	My belief is that local councils should be free to decide that there are already enough bars and pubs in a neighbourhood. Clusters of pubs and bars can create disorder and disorder hotspots. Local councils should be able to take into account the proximity of existing licensed premises when considering a new application. Such decisions would not be taken in isolation—there are examples from other parts of the world. In New York, for example, a bar would not be licensed were it within 500 yd of another bar. I see my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Field) in his place, and I look forward to his contribution. He represents a council that is a shining example of deciding on a set of policies that balance the rights of consumers and publicans and ensure that visiting those parts of Westminster is an enjoyable experience. All that hard work counts for nothing because of these new regulations.

Andrew Turner: Would my hon. Friend be surprised to hear that when the Bill came from another place, one of the requirements for local authorities to take into account when deciding whether to grant licences was
	"the prevention of unreasonable diminution of the living and working amenity and environment of interested parties in the vicinity of the premises balancing those matters against the benefits to be derived from the leisure amenity of such premises"?
	But the Government, with their amendment No. 8, removed the whole of that, and merely put in some words along the lines of a public nuisance provision. Public nuisance is a narrowly defined legal concept, however, and their lordships were sensible to bring forward their provision. I cannot for the life of me understand why the Government wanted to remove it.

Eric Pickles: I agree with my hon. Friend, who makes an extremely good point. In preparation for the debate, I spent many hours going through the new regulations, which are beautifully reproduced on the Department's website. It seems to me that the points that the right hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras was making, and the concessions, have been whittled away stealthily by the guidelines. That seems fundamentally wrong, and if the House will forgive me for saying so, fundamentally deceitful.
	It seems to me that the way in which pubs and clubs are managed is a key factor in explaining why some venues generate disorder and others do not. Local councils should be able to attach conditions to licences, for example, on drinks promotion. All those things are denied, however, by the guidelines.
	I want to make another point on the question of fees. Much has been said about the fees, and the hon. Member for South Dorset (Jim Knight) mentioned the idea that they would perhaps cover the costs of councils. The new multiplier for town and city pubs will have little impact, however, as most such premises are in rateable value bands of A and B. It will have only a limited effect in London. Most high-band premises are likely to be town halls, hotels, supermarkets and schools. In most local authority areas, only 5 to 10 per cent. of licensed premises are in bands D and E. I represent a prosperous part of Essex with high levels of council tax in terms of capital value, but although one would expect that to be reflected in the rates, in the Brentwood borough council area just 6.7 per cent. of premises are in bands D and E, and 80 per cent. are in bands A and B. In hard numbers, there are seven premises in band D and 11 in band E. Those 18 are Brentwood leisure centre, a number of supermarkets and the secondary schools. No public houses are involved.
	Given that revaluation is about to occur, any licensee with an eye to cost will put in for a new licence immediately to benefit from what are currently relatively low rateable values. Revaluation will mean dramatic changes in the figures. Licensees will put their applications in early to save money, and from February onwards authorities will be smothered in sacks upon sacks of applications. That is why the figures given by the Home Secretary and the Minister are so far off the mark.
	There has been a move towards a concession in the review. I am glad that the Home Secretary committed himself today to a review that will examine local authorities' transition costs, the level of fees and the size of committees, for all those things are important.
	An important transfer of responsibilities to local authorities has been seriously undermined by the diminution of the role of councillors in speaking up for their local populations and the people whom they represent. What was sold to us as local democracy and local people working things out together has deteriorated into what is simply local management of a licensing system that is devoid of democratic accountability.

Charles Hendry: It is a pleasure to take part in this important debate. I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young): the debate is not remotely concerned with how the overwhelming majority of law-abiding citizens, especially young people, live their lives. We know that they often live in a night-time culture, that they like going out at night and that drink is part of that culture, but the vast majority behave in an extremely responsible way. The debate is really about delaying the change in the laws to take account of growing public concern about the antisocial behaviour that already exists.
	Perhaps the most surprising thing that has emerged from the debate so far is the Liberal Democrats' commitment to reducing to 16 the age at which people will be allowed to buy drink. That is very irresponsible. It may be welcomed by 16 and 17-year-olds, but it will cause profound concern to parents, the medical profession, charities working with addiction, the police and many others. I hope that the Liberal Democrats will be prepared to reconsider.

Don Foster: I am slightly perplexed by the juxtaposition of the hon. Gentleman's opening remarks, in which he praised the vast majority of young people for behaving responsibly, with his later comments. Does he not believe that 16 to 18-year-olds can behave responsibly? If he does, does he not believe that they can therefore treat drink responsibly?

Charles Hendry: I certainly believe that the overwhelming majority behave responsibly, and would behave responsibly; but if the hon. Gentleman consults the charities working in the sector, the medical profession and the police, he will learn that they have serious misgivings about the extension that he proposes.
	Today, however, we are obviously focusing on the Government's position. I am afraid that I thought the Home Secretary's speech was characterised primarily by a sense of complacency, which did not seem to take account of the depth of the crisis that we already face. This issue does not just affect big cities; it has spread to small towns. My constituency contains four medium-sized towns containing between 10,000 and 20,000 people, and antisocial behaviour linked to alcohol and the crime that accompanies such behaviour are an increasingly regular problem in those communities. Even the smaller villages containing 3,000 or 4,000 people are experiencing alcohol-related problems, including crime, which were unknown just a few years ago.
	My right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis), the shadow Home Secretary, said that the cost of alcohol-related crime was £7 billion a year. That is an horrific and frightening figure. Perhaps we should set it against the amount that the Government will make from the change in the licensing hours. They will gain extra money from income tax and national insurance, extra money from VAT on the extra alcohol that is served, and extra money from corporation tax on the extra profits that are made. Yet they say that they should bear no responsibility for the associated costs of disruption and crime that will follow the change, which I consider very irresponsible.
	It goes further than that, however. The Government cannot claim to be the party to solve the current problems when they must bear responsibility for the growth of those problems in the first place. Reference has been made to their campaign at the time of the last election:
	"Cldnt give a XXXX for last orders? Vote Labour for xtra time."
	I am encouraged by the recognition on the part of the hon. Member for Selby (Mr. Grogan) that that was an ill-thought-through campaign. It was not targeted at the majority who will drink responsibly; it was deliberately designed to say to young people "Vote Labour. Get a Labour Government, and go out and get hammered at night." It was an irresponsible campaign, and the Government should take responsibility for it. They must take the blame for the fact that alcohol-related crime and binge drinking are at their worst ever levels. They worked to encourage that culture—they thought it would be cool to be the champions of late night drinking—and now they face the consequences as the majority who do not want that kind of society rise up in anger.
	The Government have also shown shocking naiveté. The Home Secretary must be the only person who believes that longer opening hours will not lead to more drunkenness. We must ask ourselves why the publicans would want the longer hours. Do we honestly believe that if they thought the same people would be drinking the same amount of alcohol, but over a longer period, they would be keen to stay open for longer? Their staffing costs would rise, their takings would stay the same and their profits would go down. The publicans only want to stay open because they know that people will drink more. We must be in no doubt that, as a result of these changes, some people will become more drunk, and the consequences will be more serious. The Home Secretary also seems to make no distinction between all-day drinking and all-night drinking. The culture that goes with night-time drinking is very different.
	It is clear that the Government simply do not recognise the misery that drunken behaviour causes. It is not just the violence; it is the noise, the rowdiness, the rudeness and the threatening behaviour that so often accompany drunkenness. Nor do the Government take account of the consequences. They take no account of those who must clear up the broken glass, those who must dodge the sick left on the pavement the following day, and those who must put up with the smell of urine that is left behind. Those are things that have blighted communities and made living in too many of our town centres a misery for people—people on whom the Government have turned their back. People want a Government who will deal with the root causes, and not just bandage the problems that they have allowed, even encouraged, to get worse.

Andrew Turner: There are further consequences in terms of the number of admissions to hospital accident and emergency units, of which I understand 70 per cent. are rooted in alcohol. Most instances of domestic violence are also rooted in alcohol, and many take place at night.

Charles Hendry: My hon. Friend is entirely right. Some time ago, I spent a night with the Sussex ambulance service and my respect for the people doing such work knows no bounds. Every single call responded to that night, bar one, was related to drunkenness or drugs; only that one call involved an immediate medical problem. Such people are right in the front line, and they also have to deal with very aggressive and dangerous behaviour.
	We need tougher action to be taken, and I welcome what the Home Secretary said about tightening up on the sale of drink to people below the legal age. But I hope that the Government will go further, and that the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport will say something about how we tackle the false identity documents that so many young people possess these days. Not only do some young people photocopy their passport and then change the date of birth electronically, thereby producing what appears to be a copy of a legitimate passport; they can also get false ID cards online. To do so, they simply give a date of birth, and no verification of it is sought. So those who are doing their best to be responsible are sometimes thwarted by young people who carry false ID cards.
	The people who bear the brunt of these problems are of course the police, whose concerns have already been discussed at some length today. Just last week, the chairman of the Sussex police authority wrote to the Home Secretary. In that letter, copies of which were provided for local Members of Parliament, he expressed concern about the impact that such changes will have on police officer recruitment and training in particular. He said:
	"It has been widely acknowledged that if people are drinking longer and later, our towns and cities will be busier and people will be drinking more. The result will be more people under the influence of alcohol or drunk, and this will result in more crime and disorder.
	The implications for Police Forces in terms of additional workload are significant and officers will have to be diverted from other policing priorities and activities to undertake enforcement activity against those who are drunk and disorderly.
	If drinking establishments were allowed to open until three or four in the morning the police would have to take officers off day shifts in order to do their job effectively at night.
	However, I am particularly disturbed by recent comments from ministers that simply introducing a levy on the drinks industry will pay for the extra cost of policing the effects of binge drinking. Of course the industry—as a major contributor to the problem—should meet the lion's share of the costs, but these comments make huge assumptions that Police Forces will easily be able to recruit police officers and attract young people to a career which fundamentally involves policing anti-social, violent binge drinkers."
	The chairman has put his finger on an extremely important issue. The nature of policing in our communities will change, and the police will be spending more time dealing with some of the most aggressive, violent and rowdy people. At the moment, such behaviour is contained within a certain period, following closing time. However, if such changes go through, that behaviour will be spread over a much longer period and the police will have to deal with more aggressive and drunk people. We need to take this issue very seriously indeed.
	I believe that the Government want to push these changes through at such speed because they want to appear cool, but these changes are neither cool nor clever. In my role as shadow Minister with responsibility for young people, I probably go to more youth clubs, schools, colleges and universities than most Members do. I know from the young people I meet there that their first concern is crime and their safety. That is not surprising, because young people are more likely—twice as likely as the average person—to be the victims of crime than any other section of the community. They are also more concerned about crime. Their fear of crime is greater, which is not surprising, given that their experience of it is so much greater than the average. They want to be able to go out and enjoy themselves, and they want the Government to clamp down on alcohol-linked antisocial behaviour.
	It is therefore extremely important that the Government think again and provide some extra time, so that the issue of flexible opening hours can be addressed—we all agree that it must be addressed—and that the urgent issues of alcohol-related crime, binge drinking and antisocial behaviour can be dealt with first.

Mark Field: Let us for once be wise before the event. The Government cannot claim that they have not been warned by Members on all sides of the House—let alone by the police, the medical profession and smaller, independent, family-run licensed businesses—about the consequences of the Licensing Act 2003. I hope that we can put its implementation on hold until we have a sensible strategy on antisocial behaviour and binge drinking. To do anything else would be naive to the point of negligence. Simply Europeanising our drinking habits and licensing laws will not instil in our young people Mediterranean attitudes to alcohol consumption.
	I want to explain what lies at the heart of my objections to this legislation, and I should first point out that I do not support the idea of a nanny state. Reference has been made the problems that exist in London's west end. Many bars in Soho and Covent Garden already have staggered licensing hours; indeed, the same is true of much of central London. The myth has arisen that this country has a pre-first world war licensing regime. The hon. Member for Selby (Mr. Grogan) referred to the brooding presence of Lloyd George in debates on licensing matters, but licensing hours, particularly in our larger towns and cities, have already developed well beyond those days. My own constituency contains a number of bars and pubs that remain open well beyond 11 o'clock; indeed, some remain open until as late as 3 o'clock in the morning. I am afraid that flexible licensing has not made a great deal of difference to much of the behaviour on our streets.
	I must confess that I am instinctively a libertarian: I do not like imposing lots of rules and regulations. I can understand part of the Government's thinking, and it is an important part. They want to take a much more flexible attitude, and I only wish that we could rely on many of our citizens behaving responsibly. I want to discuss my own constituency not because it is entirely unusual—that said, Westminster has more alcohol licences than any other borough in the country—but because it underlines the point that without that sense of responsibility, we cannot ensure that we will create the sort of world in which we would like to live.
	In Soho and Covent Garden—a part of London that I share with the right hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson)—the great majority of the residential population are not necessarily there out of choice. I have always believed that those who buy a property next door to a football ground or a pub have to expect a certain amount of disruption. In a previous life, I was a member of the planning committee of the royal borough of Kensington and Chelsea, which often debated such matters. It struck me then that to buy a property knowing that certain problems would arise because it was near a large entertainment venue, and then to complain about such disruption, was the height of selfishness. However, some 60 per cent. of the population of Soho and some 70 per cent. of the population of Covent Garden—many thousands of people—are living in some form of social housing. They have very little choice about where they live, and many of them constitute some of the most vulnerable in our society. They are trying to bring up their families in the face of appalling disorder.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Charles Hendry) rightly referred to the debris that we see on our streets. Indeed, we see it day in, day out on the streets of Soho and Covent Garden. In addition to rubbish, urine and vomit, we sometimes come across used needles and the other detritus that is part and parcel of a "good night out". When the young people living in inner-city London discover such detritus outside their schools, churches and church halls—the places that constitute the very heart of our inner-city communities—that creates an extremely difficult situation.
	It is often forgotten that places such as Leicester square have a thriving residential population. Some 10,000 people live in Soho and Covent Garden, which combined constitute an area of some two and a half square miles. We need to encourage vibrant residential populations not just within London, however, but within all our cities. For the first time in two centuries, inner-city populations are rising in places such as Leeds, Manchester and Liverpool. That is greatly to be welcomed, but we need the civilising force that a genuine sense of community would provide.
	I am not against the alcohol trade at all. In Standing Committee, many of the Act's most vocal supporters came from the smaller, family-run outfits, who felt that they were being driven out of central London. One of the greatest pities is that the larger alcohol and entertainment businesses have little stake in our communities and therefore little sense of the needs of inner-city residential populations. As several hon. Members have pointed out, they are able to employ the most expensive lawyers to ensure that they maintain their licences.
	I am not against young people having a good time either. I suspect that I am the youngest hon. Member in the Chamber at the moment—although I am not as young as I should like to think, having already celebrated my 40th birthday. However, the selfish and loutish behaviour evident in our towns and cities is simply unacceptable. We should try to cultivate civility, good manners and consideration. In addition, the inner cities should be places where families can thrive, as well as places where people both old and young can enjoy the available resources. We need to ensure that a sense of community runs from cradle to grave.
	While we are in the business of exploding some myths, there are a few others that I would like to consign to oblivion. To put it charitably, the Prime Minister could be said to have been inexact in his recollection of events when he argued at last week's Prime Minister's Question Time that the Conservative party was jumping on a bandwagon, having previously supported this Act. That is not the case: we had a robust debate in Standing Committee, and we also opposed the legislation on Third Reading. We divided the Committee umpteen times, and our opposition to the Act has gained many third-party endorsements.
	The boorishness and vulgarity promoted by many members of the celebrity media shame our cities and towns, but we also face the unedifying spectacle of a Government in a wild panic as they try to close down what they see to be a public relations disaster. The hapless rearguard action being led by the Home Office and the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport is rather pathetic. Since last weekend, we have heard much rhetoric about banning orders, on-the-spot fines and the "three strikes and you're out" response. That rhetoric is getting louder and brasher, but as ever with this Government, it is all about spin. The Government are more concerned about getting headlines than controlling the real problem that faces us.
	How in heaven's name can any of the new rules be enforced if we do not have the necessary police and transport infrastructure? We asked those questions two years ago, when the Bill was in Committee, and it is unfortunate that we are no further forward in ensuring that we have that infrastructure. It is all very well to have endless rules and regulations on the statute book, but they will have no value if we cannot enforce them through tough and effective policing.
	The astronomical proposed increase in flexible licence fees may help local authorities recoup some of the administrative costs that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport has been so reluctant to underwrite. However, what will be the cost in the longer term? Ministers must understand that the legislation will have a most serious effect on small, responsible, family-run bars, restaurants and pubs—the very establishments that we should be looking to encourage, as they would ensure the civilised nature of our towns and cities to which I referred earlier.
	I fear that the agenda will be set instead by the all-powerful alcohol industry and its close cousins, the large-scale entertainment operators. They were the driving forces behind much of this legislation, and no doubt they will become handsome contributors to the Labour party's coffers.
	I could say a lot more, but I know that time is running out. I wanted to touch on the point so ably made by the right hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras about the many undertakings that have been swept away. They worked well and provided an effective mechanism for allowing residents, local councillors and businesses to have a real say under the old procedure. I regret their loss.
	I shall end as I began: I am not a killjoy, and I do not support restrictive, nanny-state regulations. I wish that everyone could be responsible, civilised and courteous, but we must face the facts in respect of our society. What sort of cities should we aspire to have in 20 or 30 years? Do we want there to be no-go zones? Do we want there to be a commercial free for all in inner cities bereft of a residential population? Do we want Governments of whatever colour enforcing on a daily basis banning orders on drinking, on-the-spot fines for people roaming the streets late at night, and implementing the "three strikes and you're out" policy?
	The lesson of regeneration in the cities to which I referred earlier is that it is vital that our cities have vibrant and articulate residential populations. I spend a lot of time speaking to residents associations in the villages that make up central London. The people to whom I speak are passionately proud of their sense of community and want to develop it. I want our cities to be wonderful places for families, but any sensible observer would concede that this Act, as it stands, undermines their very fragile balance. I beseech the Government to think again, and to work to get the legislation right.

Desmond Swayne: I went to university in Scotland, some considerable time ago. When I first arrived, people who wanted to get a drink on a Sunday had to go to a hotel, as bona fide travellers. Since then, the word "traveller" has acquired an unwelcome connotation, but there has been little progress when it comes to licensing.
	The licensing Act 2003 is a dreadful measure. I am glad that I voted against it. It introduces licensing flexibilities, but at an enormous cost. I have already spoken in the House about the experience of my constituent, Mr. John Crosthwaite-Eyre. He has been told that the licence for his Dunwood Manor golf club will rise from £16 to £1,145. That will not secure a more flexible licence that extends opening times beyond what was previously available. The new licence will only allow the club to open as it has always done.
	That huge increase in cost is presumably a consequence of the shift from magistrate licensing to local authority licensing. I understand the rationale behind that, as it will lead to greater public accountability. However, we have already heard about the regulations that will remove any real accountability, as they will prevent councillors from representing the localities to which they are supposed to be accountable.
	Some months ago, my wife and I had the misfortune to have to go on a mission of mercy—we had to accompany a friend to casualty on a Saturday night. The local general practitioner had diagnosed an infection in our friend's joints, and had recommended that the lady concerned should be taken to hospital in Southampton. We arrived in casualty to be greeted by a scene that could have been painted by Hieronymous Bosch. I could not believe it—there was blood and vomit everywhere, and people were arguing and fighting. Some of the "clients"—if one can call them that—made it clear that what we witnessed was a typical Saturday night, and that impression was reinforced by the staff. Many people consider ending up in casualty on a Saturday night as part of what habitually happens. It is, to them, unremarkable that one might end a Saturday evening with a trip to casualty.
	By contrast, the Government have held out the prospect of a café culture, with a more Mediterranean approach to drinking habits. I can understand the attraction of that.
	The hon. Member for Selby (Mr. Grogan) gave us a good illustration of what happens in a pub as we approach closing time. However, I do not swallow the argument that the problem that a minority of our fellow citizens have with drink arises because of the confines of our existing drinking laws and that by getting rid of them we will be able to move to the sunny uplands of a café culture. I just do not believe that. The cart is being put before the horse. We have to analyse the real causes of our problematic drinking culture and then we will, perhaps, be able to liberalise our drinking laws in the hope that that will lead to more sensible drinking. But it is madness to do it the other way round and assume that the benefits that are enjoyed by certain Mediterranean countries will automatically flow to us simply by liberalising our licensing laws, when we already know that we have a severe problem.
	I am glad that the hon. Gentleman recognised the irresponsibility of the text message that was sent to young voters just before the last general election. It bears repetition:
	"Cldnt give a XXXX 4 last ordrs? Vote Labour 4 xtra time".
	That is not a message for people seeking to enjoy a café culture. It has a wholly different connotation.
	There may be additional marginal benefits for people who wish to drink at any time in a 24-hour period. However, I cannot understand the desire to drink at 7 am, unless one is suffering from a dreadful toothache or something similar. The benefits and convenience will accrue to those people who wish to drink at 7 am, but enormous inconvenience will be caused to my constituents. My hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Field) made the point about the residential population of places such as Covent Garden. My constituency is typified by small towns—for example, God's own town of Lymington—in which the High street contains not only commercial premises but people's houses. It is a residential area, but those who live there have to endure the problems that arise as drinkers approach pubs, at closing time and after closing time. I do not believe that those problems will be solved if closing times are staggered so that people are not thrown on to the street at the same time. The reality for my constituents will be that the agony will be prolonged. Frankly, that is not an experiment that I want to see take place. I would prefer the benefits to be established before it happens in Lymington.
	Labour Members—I exclude the right hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson), because he has a long and honourable record on the issue—seemed to be over-sensitive when they intervened on my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis). The tenor of their interventions was not that my right hon. Friend's argument was wrong. Indeed, the premise of their interventions was that they accepted entirely what he was saying. They merely complained that he had not said it sooner. They implied that it was the job of the Opposition to discover the falsehoods inherent in the Government's arguments and statistics. Well, those Labour Members were wrong in fact, because many of us have been making such points for some time—perhaps not as vocally as we should have done—and they also attempted to absolve themselves from any responsibility for holding the Government to account. It is not only the Opposition who are responsible for holding the Government to account the entire House of Commons, but—indeed, it is the entire Parliament. Part of our problem with the passage of legislation is the acceptance that scrutiny is down to the Opposition. If more Labour Members had taken the lead from the right hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, given that their influence over the Government is likely to be much greater than ours, we might have made more progress than we have.

Jim Knight: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will have noticed that during this Parliament, Labour Members have done their best to hold the Government to account on a range of issues. Labour Members have shown great independence from Government, as is evident from their voting records. The problem is that when the Opposition are slow to discover their opposition, it looks as if they are jumping on a bandwagon.

Desmond Swayne: I accept entirely that several Labour Members have a good record of voting against the Government. I urge them to do it more often—

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. Perhaps hon. Members would return to the motion under discussion.

Desmond Swayne: Precisely, Madam Deputy Speaker.
	The hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster) was very honest in his speech when he made the profoundly shocking admission that the Liberal Democrats' policy is to reduce the age at which alcohol can be consumed legally. In my constituency, we have a problem with under-age drinking and the disorder to which it gives rise. That criminality could certainly be avoided at a stroke by reducing the age at which alcohol can be consumed, but does it really address the problem?

Andrew Turner: Is it not curious that the Liberal Democrats believe that the introduction of the measures in this Act should be delayed pending a resolution of the problems of binge drinking, but have said nothing about delaying the reduction in the age at which youngsters could buy alcohol pending resolution of the problems under-age drinking causes? Presumably, the Liberal Democrats know that they will never be in a position to deliver that reduction.

Desmond Swayne: That is the key point. We should not for one moment assume that a reduction in the age at which alcohol can be purchased will lead to a lessening of the problems that arise from young people acquiring and consuming alcohol. However, I reassure my hon. Friends that there is not the remotest prospect of such a policy being implemented. When I knock on doors and discuss the voting intentions of constituents, I am sometimes tempted to terrify them with Liberal Democrat policies—

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. There is no reference to voting intentions in the motion.

Desmond Swayne: If my constituents were to be worried about the prospect of a reduction in the age at which alcohol may be purchased, I would seek to reassure them that the likelihood of that happening lay in their own hands.

Andrew Turner: In the few moments available to me, I want to read an excerpt from the Government's favourite newspaper, the Daily Mail, and invite the Minister to intervene on each and every occasion when something in the article by Steve Doughty on 13 January is wrong. She has an open invitation to do that.
	The article says:
	"Experts who prepared a report for the Government stressed that increasing availability of alcohol could have dangerous results, and cited examples round the world."
	Is that untrue? I ask the Minister.
	"But this evidence was cut out of a 'sexed-down' dossier published last year."
	Is that untrue? The Minister glances at the sky.
	"The report, Alcohol Harm Reduction Strategy, was produced with the help of 17 experts."
	I take it that there is no dispute about that. It goes on to say:
	"First drafts contained a key passage which said: 'Restrictions on availability reduce consumption and general levels of harm. Relaxing availability increases general harm whether through more outlets (Finland), denser outlets (California), or longer hours (Western Australia) . . . When the final version of the report appeared, no reference to the effects of extending drinking hours was left in.
	Is that true? I ask the Minister.
	"Instead the report carried a soothing foreword by Tony Blair which declared that the report showed 'the best way to minimise the harms is through partnership between government, local authorities, police, industry and the public themselves'."
	I ask the Minister—why were those changes made?
	"Some medical experts who contributed to the report were so alarmed that they contributed to an independent report ultimately published virtually simultaneously with the Downing Street dossier by the Academy of Medical Sciences."
	The Government really have to explain why those of us who served on the Standing Committee and took part at such length in its proceedings were not provided with accurate information by the then Minister for Tourism, Film and Broadcasting, who is now the Minister for Lifelong Learning, Further and Higher Education. I do not know whether it was his fault, the fault of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport—in which case, the Secretary of State can doubtless answer—or of the Prime Minister, who once again removed information that should have been put before Parliament. It is most important that, if nothing else, we hear the answer to that in the Minister's winding-up speech.

John Whittingdale: When the Home Secretary made his speech at the beginning of the debate, I think that he said that he agreed with the first quarter of the remarks made by my right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary. Almost every person who has spoken in the debate would agree about the seriousness of the problems that we now face—binge drinking, alcohol-related violence, the implications for the health service and the damage to the quality of life of people living not just in our inner cities but in towns throughout the country. I represent a rural area, and the problems are as serious for my constituents as they are for the constituents of my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Field).
	The problems have always been at the centre of the debate surrounding the Licensing Act 2003. When the Bill received its Second Reading 22 months ago, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport began her speech by pointing out the cost to the nation of alcohol-related disease and the growing problem of alcohol-related violence. She then specifically defended the proposals in the Bill on the basis that:
	"Abolishing arbitrarily fixed closing times means that the incentive to drink as much as possible before closing time at 11pm will go. Disorder and nuisance will be reduced as the concentration of people on the street at closing time will fall."
	She went on to claim:
	"The abolition of fixed closing times and its effect on binge drinking ties the Bill very closely to the national alcohol harm reduction strategy." ."—[Official Report, 24 March 2003; Vol. 402, c. 57–8.]
	In the same debate, we pointed out that many people disputed this view and that, in particular, there was international evidence that did not support it. Indeed, a number of police officers and local authorities had also questioned it. However, what we did not know at that time was that this view was also disputed by many in the Government as well and that the assurances that the Government were acting in accordance with the views of the police and their own advisers on alcohol reduction were not correct.
	We now know that the draft alcohol harm reduction strategy circulated to the Cabinet in August 2003 stated:
	"Relaxing availability . . . increases general harm whether through more outlets (Finland), denser outlets (California) or longer hours (Western Australia)."
	However, when the interim strategy was published the following month, that sentence was removed because, in the words of the Secretary of State, it was misleading and based on a highly selective review of the available evidence. That seems to represent a strong attack on the competence of the Prime Minister's strategy unit, which drafted the document.
	The unit was not alone in the Government in expressing its concern. We now know that the Home Office's crime reduction director said a year ago:
	"The Licensing Act will make matters worse. Binge drinking is a particular problem".
	The then Home Secretary apparently said that plans to allow 24-hour drinking were a leap in the dark that risked worsening the situation of violent crime and yobbish behaviour.
	Too many of our towns and cities are already becoming no-go areas at night because of the activities of drunken yobs. Prior to the passage of the Licensing Bill, I spent a Friday night in the west end with licensing officers from Westminster city council. We visited several large clubs—I believe that they are now known as vertical drinking establishments—each of which was packed with more than 1,000 people who appeared to have the sole purpose of drinking as much as possible in the time available. I also spoke to residents of Soho that evening, and my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster has referred to their experiences every weekend and the fact that their quality of life had been destroyed as a result. After entering the home of one resident to talk about the scale of the problem, I emerged to find that someone had vomited on his doorstep. He said, "Don't worry. It'll probably be the first of three or four occasions when that happens tonight." I have also spent a night with the police in Chelmsford in my constituency. Over the course of about six hours, almost every incident that we attended was related to excess drinking and the fights, vandalism and yobbish behaviour that result from that.
	According to the Government's figures, alcohol misuse is costing £20 billion a year. It accounts for half of all violent crime and up to 70 per cent. of admissions to accident and emergency departments. It accounts for about 17 million lost working days and 22,000 premature deaths. Of course, the Government are right to say that those figures reflect the present situation and thus cannot be blamed on the relaxation of drinking hours, which is yet to take effect, but they cannot ignore the list of experts who unanimously predict that extended opening hours will make the problem worse.
	Although the Association of Chief Police Officers' original response to the White Paper supported flexible opening hours, subject to caveats, even then it pointed out the danger that they could lead to
	"an unintended and much later uniform closing time . . . when fewer police resources are available and facilities such as transport are more limited".
	Since then, it has expressed greater concern by warning:
	"The result will be more people under the influence of alcohol or drunk and this will lead to more crime and disorder".
	The Chief Inspector of Constabulary said:
	"it may be pouring people out on the streets at different times but that's in an even worse state of inebriation".
	The Police Federation said:
	"Our officers' experience is that if even more alcohol becomes available through 24-hour opening there can be only one result: even more drunkenness".
	We now learn that the medical profession, too, is united in its opposition. The chairman of the Royal College of Physicians alcohol committee has said:
	"we are facing an epidemic of alcohol related harm and to extend the licensing hours flies in the face of common sense as well as the evidence from other countries".
	An A and E consultant at St Mary's hospital, Paddington, has said:
	"Ireland and Australia have seen a huge increase in alcohol consumption and attendances at A&E departments have also soared."
	The Irish Medical Organisation has said:
	"The Royal College is right to be concerned. The evidence from Ireland shows that if the pubs open all night then people drink all night".
	However, let us remember that the Prime Minister's strategy unit document pointed out overseas experience, but the Secretary of State removed that by suggesting that it was a highly selective review of the evidence.
	Yesterday, we debated the Gambling Bill on Report. The Government appeared for a long time to dismiss the concerns of those who warned against the dangers of gambling addiction that could result from the introduction of mega-casinos into the UK, yet in that same Bill the Government proposed to place draconian restrictions on family seaside arcades for which no evidence of harm has ever been produced. Today, in the Licensing Act, we face an almost identical situation: the Government are pushing ahead with the introduction of extended opening hours against a chorus of opposition from the police, doctors and experts in alcohol addiction. Yet, in the very same Act, as my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, West (Mr. Swayne) pointed out, they are forcing local voluntary sports clubs to pay massively increased fees for a licence to run a bar at the end of a game. Last week, the chairman of the Central Council of Physical Recreation said:
	"In the Government's quest to appear tough on binge drinkers, it has penalised sport and recreation organisations that do so much good in the community . . . It is completely unacceptable to devastate the British sporting landscape just so the Government can appear tough on crime."
	It seems extraordinary that, with the same piece of legislation, the Government are going to drive out of business many sports clubs, which play a vital part in increasing the fitness of the nation and therefore improving the health of the nation, while ignoring all expert advice and going ahead with extended opening hours, which will lead to more drunkenness, more violent crime and more alcohol-induced illness and death.
	In the course of the debate, we have heard extremely good speeches from hon. Members on both sides of the House. The right hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson) is fully justified in claiming to have been consistent on the issue: he has indeed campaigned on it for many years and it is a pity that he was not listened to earlier. The hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster) made some sensible comments—I often find myself agreeing with him. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. Pickles), he pointed out some of the difficulties that local authorities will have in taking advantage of the powers once the guidelines have tied their hands. However, like many of my colleagues, I found extraordinary the hon. Gentleman's confirmation of the Liberal Democrat policy of reducing from 18 to 16 the age at which people are able to purchase alcohol and drink in pubs. When we are facing a significant increase in under-age drinking and the problems to which it leads, to cut the age at which people are allowed to drink seems a curious solution.
	My right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) made some interesting observations drawn from his experience of participating in the police parliamentary scheme, and he described methods being adopted in Southampton. It is true that a co-ordinated approach is required and many of the strategies being adopted by the police in places such as Southampton bear examination. The hon. Member for Selby (Mr. Grogan) rightly pointed out that the problem is not a new one: it goes back many years. He honestly admitted that the spin put on the policy by Millbank's sending out that famous text message contributed little to the arguments in favour of it.
	It was my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar who made some important observations about the difficulties that local authorities will have in implementing the legislation and using their powers to control binge drinking. He supported the transfer of responsibilities to local authorities. We had some reservations about that when it was proposed, but we accepted the case for transfer, albeit only if local authorities were able to use those powers properly. My hon. Friend pointed out one or two serious problems that have since been discovered in the published guidelines—in particular, the fact that a local ward councillor is considered to be biased and will therefore not be eligible to vote on the proposal to approve an application for an extended opening hours licence. As my hon. Friend said, the one person who knows the circumstances best of all in that ward is undoubtedly the ward councillor. Yet he is disqualified. Equally, parish councils are not able to make representations. The ability of local authorities to control excessive drinking will be severely constrained as a result. I hope that the Government will revisit this matter.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Turner) made the important point that when we came to consider what is now the Act, 18 months to two years ago, we did so without the Government telling us of the analysis that had been carried out within Government and of the advice that they were receiving outside Government. Given what we now know, we consider that the Government should pause. The degree of opposition from the police, the medical profession and other experts is so great that it would be foolish for the Government to press ahead without pausing and carrying out a thorough assessment.
	On the Gambling Bill, the Government agreed to retreat. They agreed to introduce a pilot scheme before allowing mega-casinos to come to this country. There is an identical case here. We have the evidence before us. I hope that the Government, even at this late hour, will stop and think again.

Tessa Jowell: Along with my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary I, too, welcome the debate. It provides an opportunity to deal with what are literally shoals of red herrings swirling around the issue. If a fraction of what some newspapers and Opposition Members are saying were true, I would not be defending these policies and nor, I suspect, would many of my right hon. and hon. Friends.
	I start with where I think we have established a clear consensus, which is that in this country we have a severe problem with drink, drink-related crime and behaviour that is associated with people getting drunk. Throughout the country, alcohol-related disorder is rising. As many Members have described graphically, groups of yobs make some streets in some of our cities no-go areas at night. Too many of our young people have a drinking culture that encourages binge drinking—the deliberate drinking of too much too quickly so as to get drunk. Rightly, there is public concern about that and right hon. and hon. Members reflect that concern.
	It is important to recognise that the status quo is the problem, not the Licensing Act 2003, which, although it secured Royal Assent two years ago, is not yet in effect.
	I take seriously the claim of the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis), which was repeated by the hon. Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford (Mr. Whittingdale), that somehow the evidence that underpins our strategy has been tampered with. I commend to the House the interim analytical report, the research evidence that provided the background for the alcohol harm reduction strategy, which gives an unvarnished account of the harm that alcohol does in all its various ways.
	There is the question of what fuels an increase in drinking. By and large, we drink less than some of our European counterparts. There is a debate among the experts, as rigorous examination of the various research will reveal. There is a debate about price, and the price of alcohol is falling in this country. The price of alcohol in supermarkets is much less than it is in a pub. It is possible for someone to get drunk for much less money if they buy alcohol from a supermarket or from some off-licences. There is a strong body of support for the belief that that is principally driving the increase in binge drinking and alcohol-related disorder.
	Other evidence about the impact of opening times was obviously considered. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary set out clearly the evidence from the legislation in Scotland and the Isle of Man. There is also evidence of the impact of reduced consumption following the liberalisation of the licensing laws by the previous Government in 1988.

Charles Hendry: In her heart, does the Secretary of State believe that if the pubs are open longer, people will drink more, less or the same?

Tessa Jowell: I believe that there will be less drunkenness if we link the impact of flexibility and decisions made by local authorities in the knowledge of their local communities with the tough action that my hon. Friend the Minister for Crime Reduction, Policing and Community Safety announced on Friday to tackle the yob crime and disorder that causes concern among Members on both sides of the House.

Dave Watts: Although I agree with the main thrust of Government policy, does my right hon. Friend agree that a major problem is caused by pubs and clubs continuing to sell alcohol to individuals who are obviously drunk? If we are going to tackle binge drinking, we need far more effective enforcement procedures in pubs and clubs.

Tessa Jowell: My hon. Friend is right. There are two ways in which we intend to strengthen those procedures. First, it is an offence for a licensee to sell alcohol to someone who is drunk. By giving local authorities the resources for greater enforcement of the new powers, we intend to ensure that they will undertake inspections that will reveal the pubs and clubs where that is happening. We also intend to make that subject to a fixed penalty.
	No one is claiming—I am certainly not—that the Licensing Act alone will heal all the problems of alcohol and alcohol-related crime. However, we will not achieve a solution for the problems that we face without that Act, which is part of a bigger jigsaw of pieces that must be put in place if we are to make progress. The 2003 Act directly complements the alcohol harm reduction strategy, which was published last March and aims to reduce significantly the harm that alcohol causes. By linking the impact of the Licensing Act to public health education and to the targeted powers heralded in the alcohol harm reduction strategy for tackling disorder, we can begin to change the behaviour of young people. The strategy includes the development of a code of practice that addresses irresponsible sales promotions. Many young people drink too much too quickly as a result of promotions that encourage them to drink all they can for £9.99. Those promotions are designed to do nothing but encourage drunkenness. We can make responsible conduct of premises, which involves not promoting drink in that irresponsible way, a licence condition. We can also work with the industry, the best and responsible parts of which want an end to such promotions.

Dari Taylor: Does my right hon. Friend accept that some licensees already want to take up the mantle of responsibility? Over three nights, well over 6,000 young people visit Stockton town centre. Licensees have made a small additional payment to the police, who have agreed to respond quickly to incidents. In two months, there has been a 21 per cent. reduction in violent crime, and it is important that we all acknowledge that.

Tessa Jowell: My hon. Friend makes an important point. We do not need to wait for legislation to begin to take action. To her excellent example from Stockton, for which she has been a powerful advocate, I could add BAND—Burnley against Night-Time Disorder—Bedford's Bedsafe, Camden's Glitterball Project, High Peak's Safer Pubs and Clubs, Leicester's NiteRIDER, Liverpool's Crystal Clear, Manchester's City Centre Safe, and Northumberland's Alcohol Awareness plus. All those examples will be familiar to hon. Members in all parts of the House and show how local authorities, publicans and licensees are getting together to solve the problem on a voluntary basis, because they know that such responsibility is good for their businesses.

Kate Hoey: Will the Secretary of State give way?

Tessa Jowell: No, I shall make progress.
	The tough powers in the Licensing Act 2003 also means that, as we have underlined, anyone who sells unlawfully to people who are drunk puts their business at risk.
	Before recapping briefly what the new Act will do, let me make it clear what it will not do. It does not promote or encourage 24-hour drinking. That is a myth. It promotes flexible hours as a means of reducing the pressure of last orders. My hon. Friend the Member for Selby (Mr. Grogan) described vividly the risks that that involves. The legislation has been strengthened by our listening to my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson), who is so critical and who argued strongly for the powers that he set out, which are now included in the legislation.

Kate Hoey: Will the Secretary of State give way?

Tessa Jowell: No, I am not giving way.
	The Act presumes that the vast majority of people should be treated like the adults that they are. It is wrong-headed for a Government to tell the entire population that they cannot be trusted to drink after 11 pm. Our role is to give adults the freedom they deserve, while giving the yobbish minority the rough and tough treatment that they deserve. Remember, the objectives of the Licensing Act are the prevention of crime and disorder, the prevention of public nuisance, public safety and the protection of children from harm. For the first time, democratic accountability will be at the heart of alcohol licensing. I can reassure the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. Pickles) that he has got it wrong. I am happy to write to him to set out clearly the position of local councillors.
	The Act does not just give new powers to local authorities. It empowers the community as a whole. It is astonishing that no previous Government thought to give local residents any say in how their local pub was run. We have done so. For the first time, local residents will have the opportunity to intervene not only when a new licence is being considered and any extension of hours is being proposed, but at any stage after it is granted. The Act also provides a new and expanded raft of powers to enable licensing authorities to respond to residents' concerns. They will be able to add new conditions to licences, restrict the opening hours, suspend licences for one day, a weekend or up to three months, require the removal of a designated premises supervisor, remove an entire licensable activity such as selling alcohol, or as a last resort, revoke a licence.
	The Act strengthens police powers in respect of licensing and is tougher on crime and disorder and under-age sales, all of which are contributory factors to the town and city centre disorder that gives rise to such concern. The police have been consistent in wanting resources in support of new powers, but have recognised the potential benefits of flexible opening. Our message to the police is, "We are giving you the new powers and the resources. Now use them to promote the solutions to the problems that cause such concern."
	There is an opportunity now for every single Member of this House to act on behalf of their constituents, because every single licence, from 7 February, will be coming up for renewal. The police have the power to object to a simple renewal of any licence. Local residents, councillors, Members of Parliament and area child protection authorities all have the power to object to any variation of the existing licence. Democracy is there, and I urge every Member of the House to use it. I am happy to reiterate in relation to local authorities my previous undertaking that the fee levels to fund enforcement and running the new system will be kept under constant review.
	The answer to the problems that we have lies in local democracy, a more responsible drink industry and police with the power to take on the yobs. The problems have developed over years. This Government in this Licensing Act have put out a series of practical solutions that will change our town and city centres for the better. I urge the House to vote for the Government amendment.

Question put, That the original words stand part of the Question:—
	The House divided: Ayes 174, Noes 270.

Question accordingly negatived.
	Question, That the proposed words be there added, put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 31 (Questions on amendments), and agreed to.
	Mr. Deputy Speaker forthwith declared the main Question, as amended, to be agreed to.
	Resolved,
	That this House considers that failure to implement the Licensing Act 2003 without delay would deny the local community increased powers of intervention and improved democratic accountability with regard to licensing, deny the police the expanded powers that are vital to their efforts to tackle alcohol-related crime and would prevent licensing authorities from receiving income from licensing fees needed to recover on-going expenditure in preparing for the new regime; believes that any delay in the implementation of the Act would undermine the prevention of crime and disorder and public nuisance, damage public safety and hinder the protection of children from harm; further believes that the Act will complement the delivery of the Alcohol Harm Reduction Strategy for England which aims to reduce excessive drinking and the harms that causes; and, furthermore, commends the proposals for Alcohol Disorder Zones and the extension of fixed penalty notices and other measures set out in 'Drinking Responsibly', the consultation paper published jointly by the Home Office, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister on 21st January 2005.

Anthony Steen: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. As you know, a service will be held in Westminster Hall on Thursday to commemorate holocaust day. Do you know of any Members of Parliament from our House who have been invited? Who sent the invitations out for it? As far as I know, no Jewish Member has been invited to attend. Can you give us guidance about who is organising the event and how it is being arranged?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I understand the hon. Member's concerns but, without considerably more notice, I am afraid that I cannot supply any answers. I know that I have not been invited but, since the event would not take place in Westminster Hall without the authorisation of Mr. Speaker and the Lord Chancellor, the most productive line of inquiry probably lies with the Speaker's Office. I hope that that is helpful.

Food Supplements Directive

Mr. Deputy Speaker: We now come to the second debate on the Opposition motions. Mr. Speaker has selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister.

Chris Grayling: I beg to move,
	That this House regrets the passing of the Food Supplements Regulations (England) 2003; mandates the Government to use the UK Presidency to renegotiate the Food Supplements Directive with the European Union; and indicates a willingness to repeal the regulations if the renegotiation does not reach a satisfactory compromise to protect the interests of consumers and manufacturers in the United Kingdom.
	We move from the sublime to the ridiculous. The Government want us to drink alcohol at all hours but not to take vitamin tablets. The motion deals with an issue that affects millions of our constituents and gives Parliament an opportunity to send a firm message to the Government about our views and to make it clear that the House, not Ministers, is the ultimate arbiter of what happens in this country.
	Our debate is not a conventional Opposition day debate and the motion is cross-party. Subject to catching your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) will join me in supporting it. We aim to send the Government a message that the issue is beyond party politics, that hon. Members of all parties share our concerns and that it is time to do something about it.
	We know that our concerns are not confined to the Opposition or to Government Back Benchers. The Leader of the House, who is not in his place for the debate, sought to explain his party's poor performance in the European elections by citing concerns about the very subject of our debate. In an interview with The Observer just after the elections, he said that Labour would tackle over-regulation from Brussels,
	"which is just seen to be prying into nooks and crannies of life",
	and cited the decision to ban popular vitamins and herbal remedies such as echinacea. He said:
	"I think there is unnecessary interference in, for example, dietary supplements and food supplements and herbal remedies".
	I agree with him and so do the majority of hon. Members.

Simon Thomas: The hon. Gentleman might be interested to know that the Leader of the House, the right hon. Member for Neath (Mr. Hain), while wearing his other hat as Secretary of State for Wales, has called on the National Assembly to provide for GPs to be able to prescribe vitamins. He is therefore doubly caught by the motion and his opposition to it.

Chris Grayling: I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. He is right. In a recent article, which was published in Wales, the right hon. Gentleman said:
	"In years gone by the benefits of complementary medicine were derided, its proponents regarded as weirdoes, swimming against a tide of conventional medical opinion. But today there is an increasing recognition that both sectors can coexist, with the patient the winner."
	Sadly, under the directive, the patient is not the winner. Given those sentiments, why on earth has the Leader of the House put his name to the Government amendment? Its words are extraordinary. In it, the right hon. Gentleman
	"congratulates the Government on successfully negotiating a final text of the Directive that works in the interests of UK consumers and industry".
	No one who knows about the issue believes a word of that. It is nonsense.

Martin Smyth: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the Government have gone completely astray on this issue, while the manufacturers and the people of this country are writing to complain about the restrictions that are now hindering their liberties?

Chris Grayling: I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman. I am at a loss to understand why this is happening. I cannot see why the Government are so blatantly ignoring the wishes of the people, but the reality is that they are. I hope that they will change their mind today.

Lembit �pik: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that this is a classic example of the nanny state gone wild? Given whatever minor risks might be involved in using these vitamins, if people are given the choice whether to use them through illustrations on the packaging, it should be a matter for them to make the decision, especially as there is precious little evidence of any harm befalling the user.

Chris Grayling: The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, which makes it all the more disappointing that, when I approached all the different political groups in the House to sign this motion, the Liberal Democrat health spokesman refused to do so.

John Pugh: Has the hon. Gentleman signed the early-day motion tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Burstow), whom he has just maligned?

Chris Grayling: The hon. Member for Southport (Dr. Pugh) needs to understand that the motion before us today has been signed by representatives of all the other parties. His own party's health spokesman was invited to be a signatory to it when it was tabled as an early-day motion, but he declined to do so. That speaks for itself.
	This matter is another clear example of Ministers saying one thing and doing another, and just not listening to the people. What about the hundreds of Members on both sides of the House who have signed early-day motions on this issue? What about the hundreds of thousands of their constituents who have signed letters or petitions to the House? Even close friends of the Prime Minister have come out against this directive. This morning, I went to Downing street with Carole Caplin, his former adviser, carrying a letter that had also been signed by his friend Jenny Seagrove saying that enough was enough. It is time to stop this unwanted measure.

Rob Marris: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way; he is being very generous. Is he aware, however, that in certain doses, vitamin A can be fatal, and that recent research on vitamin E suggested that it could cause cancer at high dosage levels? Does he agree that we need to investigate some of these products to ascertain whether they be safe?

Chris Grayling: The hon. Gentleman is talking about products that are on sale in this country as we speak. If the Government believe that they are dangerous, they have the power to remove them from the shelves tomorrow. I have challenged the Government again and again to do that if they believe that the products are unsafe, but they have not done so. I can only assume, therefore, that they are indeed safe for consumers to use. The hon. Gentleman's argument is therefore completely invalid.

Julian Lewis: During my hon. Friend's trip to Downing street, was he able to throw any light on why this Labour Government are so keen to stop these health products being available on the market at the same time as they are decriminalising cannabis and being madly in favour of legalising all-hours super-casinos and all-hours binge drinking?

Chris Grayling: The only explanation that I can come up with is the Government's determination to follow the European harmonisation agenda at all costs. There is no other rational explanation for this.

Mark Todd: The hon. Gentleman touched briefly on another perspective when he mentioned the views of the industry that produces these products. Would it intrigue him to learn that not all those manufacturers feel the same way as he does about this? Instead, they are looking much more closely at the opportunities that will be provided by the wider European market that will be opened up by the regulations.

Chris Grayling: The hon. Gentleman has, of course, been a vociferous opponent of the directive in the past. I would say to him that we should not pursue the interests of big business at the expense of the small manufacturers and retailers that stand to lose out, or at the expense of the consumers who stand to lose the products that they have used for so long.
	What are those products? Why is this issue so important? On 1 August, about 270 ingredientsnutrient sourcesthat are currently used in vitamin tablets in this country will become illegal. They have been excluded from an official approved list set out by the EU in the directive. As a result, a substantial proportion of the multivitamin tablets on sale in this country will have to be reformulated by 1 August or disappear thereafter. Some products will disappear altogether: for example, boron, which is believed by many people to be good for their bones, and vanadium, which is a product used by people with diabetes. Both are entirely excluded from the approved list. Other products such as selenium, which is widely used for women's health issues, will disappear in most of its current forms, and ironically, most of its natural current forms.
	The Government will say to us that the disappearance of those products is not inevitable, and that their manufacturers can submit a dossier that, if approved by the European authorities, will allow them back on to the approved list. The Minister will no doubt also tell us that the Government have secured a derogation until 2009, to give manufacturers the chance to put together dossiers. What they will not tell us is that they have already started to gold-plate that process. Nor will they tell us that the cost of putting together those dossiers amounts to tens of thousands of pounds each, and possibly hundreds of thousands of poundsnot in total but for each one of the 277 missing ingredientswhich means a total cost of tens of millions of pounds to an industry made up largely of small businesses. I also suspect that they will not admit that the industry says that producing such dossiers is economically viable in only a handful of cases. For millions of vitamin users, 1 August is the day when their choice, along with the products that they currently choose, disappears.

Julian Brazier: Is not there a certain historical echo with the time when Lord Rooker, who then had responsibility for this matter, banned vitamin B6 as a result of some committee of wiseacres suggesting that he should? The outcry from millions of people, foreshadowed by several Members on both sides of the House, made the Government finally reverse that ban, as that vitamin is essential to many people's health.

Chris Grayling: My hon. Friend is right. He highlights the fact that good information for consumers is highly desirable, but draconian decisions by Government are definitely not.
	We will therefore end up with a position in this country whereby it will be legal for a teenager to go out and buy a packet of cigarettes, which cause cancer, and yet it will be illegal for an adult to go out and buy vitamin tablets. That is completely and utterly absurd. The Government claim that all that is being done in the name of consumer safety. Again, I invite the Minister to stand up in the Chamber today and name any one of those 277 nutrient sources that is dangerous and should not be on the market.

Melanie Johnson: I am happy to respond to that. I would like to throw a challenge back. Can the hon. Gentleman tell us what evidence there is that many of these things are safe?

Chris Grayling: As expected, there is no answer to my question. The Government are doing what the directive doescontravening the principles of justice in this country. In this country, traditionally, one has been innocent until proven guilty. The Government are saying to consumers and manufacturers of such products that they are guilty until proven innocent, which is not good enough.

David Tredinnick: It may help my hon. Friend in formulating an answer to the Minister to tell him that more people die of the effects of aspirin every year than ever do from vitamin supplements?

Chris Grayling: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. If we consider causes of death, prescription drugs have terrible side effects, as well as bringing substantial benefits to our society. There is no evidence that vitamin tablets cause adverse health effects to anything like that extent.

Angela Browning: Given the Minister's response to my hon. Friend's invitation to her to stand up and demonstrate her knowledge on the subject, is he as alarmed as I am that she indicates that she does not know, as she asks the Opposition to provide such information, but she is quite prepared to trust the Brussels machine, with its lack of knowledge?

Chris Grayling: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Government's position is completely untenable on this matter, but they continue to pursue it, to the fury of consumers around this country.

Mark Field: Given that there are 277 nutrients on the excluded list, presumably a fair number are approved. Perhaps my hon. Friend will ask the Minister whether full tests have been applied to the many hundreds of thousands of nutrients currently on the approved listsor is it that, as my hon. Friend suggested, we have simply given in, cravenly, to the power of the EU and one or two large commercial organisations in other EU countries which are trying to drive this agenda forward?

Chris Grayling: My hon. Friend is right. It is not entirely clear how the line was drawn between approved and unapproved: certainly there are no scientific documents to back up the decisions that were made. It has been a bizarre process, illogical and unsubstantiatedbut the line has been drawn, and those products that are on the wrong side of it are banned. That is simply not acceptable.

William Cash: Do not even the exchanges that have taken place so far make it clear that there is a fundamental difference between the two sides of the House? We are prepared to make a commitment. Not only would we want to renegotiate the directive, but if those in Europe did not listen to us or refused to take account of our views, we would legislate on our own account in line with our ability to enact any legislation that is expressly and unambiguously inconsistent with European legislation if we so wish, as an act of political will and to underline the sovereignty of this House.

Chris Grayling: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The text of the motion is clear and unambiguous. It seeks renegotiation, because renegotiation is the right option. We do not want confrontation with our European partners. We simply want to go back and say This is not right for us. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood), the Opposition spokesman on deregulation, has made it absolutely clear that our policy is to renegotiate, challenge and seek to reverse the directive. We will go into the forthcoming general election wholeheartedly with that policy, and I hope Members in all parts of the House will do the same. I hope that they will demonstrate their commitment to getting this measure reversed.

William Cash: My hon. Friend did not quite answer my point. Is he giving a commitment that we will legislate ourselves if we have the opportunity to do so as a result of winning the general election, so that we can rectify the legislation on our own terms, unilaterally, if we have to?

Chris Grayling: I do not expect us to fail in our negotiation as and when we take office. We will succeed. Let us go back to Brussels, let us tell Brussels what works for this country, and let us demonstrate the sort of political leadership that has been woefully absent among Ministers in the past couple of years.
	It does not end there, though. The directive does not just set out an approved list of nutritional sources that can be used in vitamin products, it paves the way for the introduction of what are called maximum permitted levels for vitamin tablets. Members who have followed the debate know what a threat to consumers that represents.
	The rules on maximum permitted levels will limit the strength of vitamin tablets in this country. There are issues connected with the strength of vitamin tablets, and if we could be certain that the decision would be based purely on safety grounds, Conservative Membersindeed, probably all Memberswould accept it, but we know that that may well not be the case. We have a very different tradition in this country. Our vitamin tablets have always contained a much higher dosage than those in many other European countries, where the dosage may be a tiny fraction of ours. Italy and Greece, for instance, have entirely different interests when it comes to deciding vitamin levels.
	I have here a tube of typical fizzy vitamin C tablets that might be taken for a cold during the winter. In this country they tend to contain 1 g of vitamin C, as these do, but in another European country the level might be a tiny fraction of that. If this measure does what it seems it will do, this tablet that I am dropping into a glass of water will become illegal in 12 to 18 months. That is madness: it cannot be right for consumers in this country.
	The Commission wants common standards across Europe. What it actually wants is Euro-vitamin pills, available for sale throughout the single market. It intends to set out by 2006 the rules that member states will have to apply. I have been to Brussels, and have discussed with officials what is likely to happen. They say that they hope safety will be the guiding principle, but they also recognise that the challenge is rather more complex, because the issues are very different in other countries. In terms of what will happen next, Members do not need much imagination to guess where the smart money lies. The provision has to go to a committee and be agreed by countries such as France and Germany. The German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment is already saying that it wants vitamin C doses to be limited to 225 mgless than a quarter of the strength of a typical tablet in this country. It wants to cut the content of zinc tablets to one tenth the level that our own Food Standards Agency says is acceptable.

Henry Bellingham: My hon. Friend has filled me with depression. The other day, I had a bad sore throat and took a large dose of vitamin C and zinc. By the following morning, I was absolutely back to scratch and was able to fight off the cold.

Chris Grayling: My hon. Friend is right to be depressed, because if this measure is fully enforced he will no longer be able to take the tablets that he and millions of other consumers have got used to taking.
	The German Federal Institute of Risk Assessment and the German Government are of course free to take decisions on what is right or wrong for German consumers. That is none of this Parliament's business, but it is surely Parliament's role to take decisions about what is right and wrong for British consumers.

Julian Lewis: I thank my hon. Friend for giving way yet again. Surely if ever there was a case to put to the test the concept of subsidiarity, this is it. Why on earth are individual countries not qualified to take such decisions for themselves? I hope that my hon. Friend will mention at some point in his speechif we give him the chance to complete itwww.conservatives.com, where people can sign up by email to the campaign to save these health foods. If they visit that website, they will also doubtless imbibe its many other beneficial features.

Chris Grayling: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention; I hope that those listening to this debate will take his advice and look at that website. He is right about the principle of subsidiarity, which I will discuss in a moment.
	This issue also affects business, so given his responsibilities it should concern the Minister for Energy and E-Commerce, who is here to speak in this debate. According to the Government's regulatory impact assessment document, the measure will cost jobs. It says that the Government were told by companies and trade associations that the associated costs would be onerous; indeed, according to one business, the measure could have a severe effect on its competitiveness and could ultimately lead to its going out of business. The document also says that the Government were told that, at best, companies would be forced to discontinue a wide range of products, and that the resulting cost would constitute a considerable loss to any company, but particularly to a small and medium-sized enterprise. The Government were further told that, at worst, some businesses might no longer be viable.
	How much evidence do the Government need to realise that this measure will cost jobs? Why do they believe it fair that companies that have been selling such products in this country perfectly legally for many years will suddenly find on 1 August that they no longer have the right to do so? How can that be fair? How can that be right for any business? It is a travesty, and a real injustice to those hard-working entrepreneurs who are trying so hard to make their businesses a success.
	Do we really believe that there will be European harmonisation? What evidence is there that other Governments will introduce this measure? Let us consider the example of Greece. There, vitamins have always been tightly controlled; indeed, they are sold in pharmacies. Do we really believe that following this measure's introduction, the Greeks will change their practice, the market will suddenly be thrown open and vitamins will be sold in local supermarkets? We might believe that, but the Greeks do not. According to contacts in the industry in Greece, they are not going to change the way that they do things.

Angela Browning: Will my hon. Friend give way?

Chris Grayling: Of course.

Angela Browning: My hon. Friend is being very generous. Of course, the reality of our treaty-bound relationship with the European Union is that under those treaties, we do not have mutual recognition of goods and services; rather, we have the vertical integration of harmonisation bound by treaty. Whatever Greece, France or Italy do is almost academic, because such countries can start infraction proceedings against us if we do not comply with any European statutory instrument.

Chris Grayling: My hon. Friend will doubtless agree that our Government's spinelessness in challenging the European Commission on these issues is disappointing. Many other Governments are willing to challenge the Commission when their interests are at stake, and it is about time that ours started doing the same.
	What have the Government done to try to prevent this situation from arising? I am afraid that the answer is, precious little. Ministers have led consumer groups and the industry up the garden path on this issue. A year ago, I urged the Minister responsible for public health to discuss the problem with the European Commission to see whether the impact of the directive could be mitigated. She promised the industry that she would intervene with the Commissioner, but nothing happened. She was asked again, and still nothing happened. In the end, I went to see the Commissioner myself. If Her Majesty's Government could not be bothered to do that on Britain's behalf, Her Majesty's Opposition could.
	I discussed the problem with the Commissioner and his officials. They listened carefully, but told me that our conversation should have been held two years previously. I hope that Ministers will say why that conversation was not held two years previously. Where were the Government, when they still had the chance to make a difference? How many times did Ministers intervene to try to improve the directive? Did they instruct our embassies in European capitals to make representations to our European partners? What did they do?
	I became Opposition health spokesman in 2002. I remember having a meeting with the Food Standards Agency, and being told that we had secured the best deal available. However, it was a pretty poor deal.
	Not much has changed. As we hold this debate today, the European Court in Strasbourg is considering a case brought by the industry in this country that argues that the directive is illegal. Did the Government back the case, and encourage it? No, they did not. I discovered that they were not enthusiastic about the case, but instead entered a submission that was both clear and stark. They argued that the directive was proportionate and a good starting point, and that it was consistent with the principles of subsidiarity. What a betrayal of British consumers.

Adam Price: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the problem goes wider than the directive? It also relates to the amendment to the directive on pharmaceuticals that widens the definition of a drug, and to the directive on traditional herbal medicinal products. Limiting competition is very much in the interests of large pharmaceutical companies.

Chris Grayling: I have studied the matter, and the lesson that I have learned is that our Ministers seem to leave jobs like this to their officials. They are not willing to take a lead themselves, which means that our businesses and consumers are bound to suffer.
	I want to give the Minister a chance to rebut a wicked rumour that is in circulation. It has been suggested that the submission to the European Court was not seen by Ministers. I should be very happy to give way to the Minister if she wants to correct me and state that that rumour is wrong.

Melanie Johnson: I shall do so later.

Chris Grayling: I await the Minister's contribution with interest.

David Tredinnick: I rise to help my hon. Friend. The ghastly truth is that, despite pressure, the Department of Health flatly refused to see anyonemanufacturer or colleagueabout this subject until the summer of 2002. On 17 June of that year, the Department agreed to see my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Sir Nicholas Winterton) and me. The reason was that the Minister's predecessor was due to appear before European Standing Committee C the next day, and the Government were nervous about being made to look ridiculous. They were determined not to address the issue, but were forced to do so by a Committee of this House.

Chris Grayling: My hon. Friend makes a valuable contribution, which demonstrates the complete absence of leadership in this matter.
	The most revealing response to questions about the directive from hon. Members came when the Government told my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie), in September 2003, that the UK had no choice about implementing the food supplement directive because of our obligations under the European treaty. That shows a blind acceptance that there was no alternative to the directive.
	However, other countries do not take that approach. They are willing to challenge the Commission, and have done so on many occasionsin respect of the sale of British beef, for example, or the payment of subsidies to large companies, or the stability and growth pact. Why are we always too spineless to say no?
	That is what the motion is about. No one wants to break treaty obligations, and we all want a constructive relationship with our European partners, but that is not a reason for blindly accepting changes that will have such a negative effect on the people whom we represent. They do not want those changes, and it is time for us to say, Enough!
	The motion would not repeal the food supplement directive, but it would instruct the Government to renegotiate it. It expresses a willingness to repeal that and other such directives if our European partners do not work with us to find a better way. We could, for example, simply apply the directive to international trade and have a derogation for in-country sale of products. We could expand the approved list to include the missing nutrients. A variety of things could be done, with political will and leadership. We could secure amendments to the directive and ensure a better deal for British manufacturers and consumers, especially when this country holds the presidency of the EU.
	If the Government will not seek to amend the directive, it is time that this House made its voice heard. It is here in the Housenot in Downing street or in the Departmentthat the power to decide lies. It is for us to decide whether we are willing to accept or tolerate measures that the people we represent do not want. I have no doubt that in an unwhipped vote the measure would not have been passed by the House in the first place. In an unwhipped vote tonight, it would certainly be comprehensively rejected. The challenge now is for Labour Members. Whom do they represent here? Are they here to do the will of the people? No Labour Member can be in any doubt about what people outside really think. Now is our chance to start the process of getting rid of this unwanted directive. There are hundreds of thousands of people out there waiting for us to do just that. They are waiting for Labour Members to back this motion. If they do not, those hundreds of thousands of people will be ready to pay them back.

Melanie Johnson: I beg to move, To leave out from House to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof:
	congratulates the Government on successfully negotiating a final text of the Directive that works in the interests of UK consumers and industry by ensuring that products are safe, properly labelled, and can be freely traded across EU member states; notes that UK legislation gives maximum flexibility that ensures that as many products as possible can continue to be marketed after the Directive comes into effect on 1st August, and that all of the vitamins and most of the minerals currently on sale in the UK will still be available; agrees with the Government's assessment that re-opening discussion on the Directive at this point runs the risk of making its effects more restrictive and is thus against UK interests; and welcomes the Government's continued commitment to working with the industry on assessing the safety of individual food supplements, and to facilitating negotiations with the European Food Standards Agency.
	I warmly welcome this opportunity to discuss the Government's approach to legislation concerning the safety of food supplements and to defend the measures designed to protect and enhance consumer safety. I shall start with the history of the issue, because Opposition Members appear to have conveniently forgotten some of it. At the time the directive was signed, the industry recognised that it was the best achievable deal and it supported the UK's voting in favour of the directive. More specifically, three trade associations support the signing of the directive by the UKthe Health Food Manufacturers Association, the Council for Responsible Nutrition and the Proprietary Association of Great Britain.

Chris Grayling: If the Health Food Manufacturers Association supports this measure, why is it in Europe today trying to get it thrown out?

Melanie Johnson: I will come on to the history of what has happened and the issues that do and do not face us at present, but what I have told the House is accurate. The HFMA supported the UK in voting in favour of the directive at the time. The hon. Gentleman has as much responsibility for explaining that contradiction as I do.

Mark Todd: I can confirm what my hon. Friend says. I have a major manufacturer in my constituency who knew of my intellectual concerns about the proposal and took the trouble to contact me to say that they wanted to see it adopted.

Melanie Johnson: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his support. It ties in neatly with the point that I am about to make. The larger food supplements companies supported the directive and saw it as a commercial opportunity to expand their market across the EUnow enlarged.

Julian Brazier: The Minister mentions the interests of industry, but what about patients? My son suffered from chronic earaches, for which conventional medicine offered antibiotics, which have been clinically shown to break down resistance in the long run. Through a programme of high quality vitamin supplementsthe kind that will be banned in futureand herbal medicines, he has been completely cured. The patients must come first.

Melanie Johnson: Those remarks very well illustrate the point that there is apparently huge confusion among some Members about the nature of the directive and where we are with its implementation. Nothing need be banned, and nothing is currently banned. The hon. Gentleman's points about vitamin supplements

Julian Brazier: High doses?

Melanie Johnson: There is nothing whatever about dose levels, and I shall come to that point in a moment. The hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) was scaremongering. There is nothing about dose levels in the public domain, and the European Food Safety Authority has not yet opined on the subject of dosage. There is nothing on which to base any argument about dose levels.

Roger Gale: We cannot be disingenuous in the House. The Minister knows perfectly well that submissions for a legion of products will not be made within the European Union deadline and that those products will not be available. It is simply not cost-effective and worth while to make submissions for many of those products. Therefore, they will not be available.

Melanie Johnson: The hon. Gentleman is either being disingenuous himself or his brain is not working as well as I had hoped it might work. [Interruption.] I was being a little humorous, but the House will forgive me. His point is about the ingredients and the composition of products, not about dosage. That is a different matter and was raised a moment ago. I was dealing with it, but I shall come to the question of ingredients shortly.
	I have already outlined business and industry support for the directive. The House will be interested to know that Which?, the magazine of the Consumers Association, which has many hundreds of thousands of members, supports the directive. The Consumers Association publication Food SupplementsWhat the new EU legislation means for UK consumers said that it
	considers that the legislation
	on food supplements
	will mean that consumers will at long last have proper protection in a growing market that up until now has been poorly controlled . . . instead of having a negative impact, as has been suggested
	by the industry,
	the new legislation will mean that at long last consumers will be in a position to use supplements that are safe, of the quality they would expect and have far more information about what they contain and how much to take.

Rob Marris: Will my hon. Friend confirm that there is no UK system for recording centrally adverse reactions to any of these substances? The Opposition, particularly the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), seem to have totally forgotten the precautionary principle. We are almost back to the situation that we had in the 1970s when people said, I knew an old man who smoked 60 cigarettes a day until he was 85 and then got knocked over and killed by a bus. It wasn't cancer, ergo cigarettes are safe. That is patent nonsense and patently unscientific. We need to investigate the substances to find out whether they be safe, and the directive will allow the investigation to take place.

Melanie Johnson: My hon. Friend makes a very useful point. There is no system for recording adverse reactions, and not just those that are a matter of life and death. However, what would be said to any Government or Opposition who had opposed measures for consumer safety and had allowed something to enter the market which, 20 or 30 years down the line, was shown to have damaged the health of people who had taken it consistently?

Crispin Blunt: rose

Roger Williams: rose

Melanie Johnson: I wish to make progress for a minute. Then I will be happy to take interventions. I am not suggesting that such questions necessarily apply in this case, but there is no systematic way of reporting adverse reactions. The yellow card system is not used to pick up the adverse reactions to these substances. People may take them and decide to change to something else without ever reporting adverse reactions or being aware that the adverse reaction has been caused by the preparation that they have taken.

Crispin Blunt: One of the grounds being raised today at the European Court of Justice is proportionality. Does the hon. Lady not agree that it was pretty extraordinary of the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris) to talk about the safety of these things when we know that 5,000 people a year are dying of hospital-acquired infections in NHS hospitals? Surely it would be much better for the Government to regulate such matters properly, rather than wasting everyone's time by supporting the ludicrous European Union directive.

Melanie Johnson: We are taking firm action on hospital cleanliness and doing everything that we can to reduce the rate of such infections. We are on the side of the consumer on that, as we are on this. We want consumers to be safe in both contexts.

John Redwood: Is the Minister's case the ludicrous proposition that there will be no restriction in choice because all products will continue to be sold under the intrusive regulatory regime, or is she making the case that many will not be sold any more because they are unsafe? She seems to be arguing both casesshe is certainly saying that the more than 1 million people who signed the petition are wrong.

Melanie Johnson: The right hon. Gentleman makes an interesting intervention, does he not? I understand that he is the author of the part of the present Conservative document that suggests abolishing the expert group on vitamins and minerals, although that group has produced evidence that the industry and the Government agree would be a fine basis for the dosage levels, if we could get the European authorities to accept it.

John Redwood: Answer the question.

Melanie Johnson: I am answering the question. We believe that choice can be maintained, but that safety is the overriding factor. Indeed, all of us who take the supplements in one shape or form must have regard first and foremost to our health and well-being, which is what the supplements are supposed to promote.

Julian Brazier: Will the hon. Lady give way?

Melanie Johnson: I would like to make some progress, so if I may, I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman in a minute.
	We come to the question of the operation of the single market. It is important for hon. Members to accept that between 1990 and 2002, some 29 infringement procedures were initiated in cases relating to food supplements. There were also cases in which such procedures were not initiated, although there is no formal record of them. I was fascinated by the gem about negotiation from the hon. Member for Stone (Mr. Cash) versus his Front Bench. Is it not a delight to see how the Tory party still cannot agree on such fundamental issues? The hon. Gentleman would withdraw unilaterally from Europe on all fronts, but even the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell knows that that would be a disaster, as I noted from his response.

William Cash: Does not the hon. Lady accept that the motion includes a reference to repealing the regulations that have been passed under the Food Safety Act 1990? The Opposition are committed to repealing them if satisfactory renegotiation does not occur. Will she consider the question of who will make decisions during the period of grace up to August 2005? She has been going on about collaboration among various parties, but does she not accept that the European scientific body will call the final shots and only then will the matter be referred back to the United Kingdom? Surely she is effectively in hock to decisions taken by an unrepresentative body on safety standards in the European Union. Who sits on that body, and do they represent people here?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. That intervention was far too long.

Melanie Johnson: The hon. Gentleman asks quite a few questions, but he should direct them to his Front-Bench colleagues. The question of whether to repeal things seems to divide him and the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell. The hon. Member for Stone and the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood), who has already left the Chamber, are questioning

Chris Grayling: He has gone to a meeting of the shadow Cabinet.

Melanie Johnson: Shadow Cabinet, eh? [Interruption.] The right hon. Member for Wokingham and the hon. Member for Stone seem to be of the same mind in rubbishing the experts. The right hon. Gentleman rubbishes the work of the expert group on vitamins and minerals by suggesting that its job could be better done another way and that the group should be abolished, whereas the hon. Gentleman rubbishes the work of the European Food Safety Authority and the expert advice that it takes.

Several hon. Members: rose

Melanie Johnson: I shall not take interventions for a while.
	The directive was adopted in July 2002, providing three clear years until the end of the current part of the process in July 2005. The hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell says that the process is illogical, but I have news for him: I disagree. The industry has been aware since 2002 of the need for dossiers, but even though the deadline is only a few months away we are aware of fewer than 30 dossiers in preparation. I realise that we may not have all the information: some members of the industry have been reluctant to share information both with each other and with the Government on grounds of commercial confidentiality. Such concerns are perfectly proper, but they mean that we might not have some of the information about what is happening.
	July 2005the date by which the dossiers have to be submittedis not an absolute cut-off. Sources can be added after that date. Let me make it clear that, with the exception of six minerals, all vitamins and minerals are represented on the positive list; sources are on a separate list. The list is an open list, not a list of exclusions or a closed list as has been suggested. There are 112 items on the positive list. Many sources of calcium, for example, are already listed, but some preparations might use other sources which are not yet on the positive list, but which could be added if a dossier is presented.

Roger Williams: Without dossiers, the Government have said that many foodstuffs are safe or unsafe for our constituents. They have told us, with a lot of support, that salt is harmful, but make no effort either to regulate our intake or to ban it. That is why people feel that the Government are being inconsistent. How do the Government know, if they have no evidence, that the other things that they say are good for us, such as cabbages and other vegetables, are entirely safe? Eating tonnes of cabbage at one sitting would prove fatal, I am sure.

Melanie Johnson: There is a tonne of expert evidence about the dangers of salt, but salt is essential to our diet and it occurs naturally in many foodstuffs. The hon. Gentleman's point is therefore a little off the mark.

Julian Brazier: Will the Minister give way?

Melanie Johnson: No. I want to make some progress. I shall give way in a minute.
	Sources can be added to the positive list after July 2005 but will not receive derogation to remain on the market pending EFSA's decision. Sources on which dossiers have been received will remain on the market until December 2009, and in perpetuity if EFSA accepts the dossier.
	At my request, the Food Standards Agency contacted raw ingredient suppliers in the EU, the United States trade attach and officials from the US embassy to discuss the obligation to provide information to the industry to support the preparation of dossiers. What is important is the position of ingredient manufacturers. There are several such companies, several far from smallMerck of Germany, for example, recorded sales of 7.202 million in 2003. That is an extremely large sum. Another company in the UK generates sales of about 4.1 billion. These are not small companies.
	We know from what the industry has told us that it is having considerable difficulty with manufacturers of ingredients because they are not taking seriously the need to produce dossiers. As I have said, in many instances these are large or substantial companies that could produce dossiers. The FSA has indicated, at my request, that it would be content to deal with any of the resulting inquiries from the industry as a result of the contacts that have been made.
	I believe that all parties supported the setting up of the FSA. We all know why the need was identified to do that.

Julian Brazier: Earlier, the Minister suggested to me that vitamin strengths were not at risk. I came to the Chamber specifically because my son's practitioner told me that they were. In reply to an earlier intervention the Minister hinted that her expert committee was examining the issue of vitamin strengths. Will she or will she not give a clear assurance to the House that strong doses of vitamin C will not be threatened by future legislation?

Melanie Johnson: The hon. Gentleman does not understand what has happened historically. There is an expert group on vitamins and minerals, which has produced an evidence base about the levels at which it is safe to take various of these supplements on whatever dosage a day, or whatever. Both the industry and the Government agree that that is a good evidence base on dosage levels. It is the evidence base of the expert group that the Conservative party is trying to abolish. It has been submitted to the European Food Safety Authority. We are arguing that that should be the basis of the work that is done on dosage levels.
	The EFSA has yet to produce its initial findings about these dosage levels. That is the state of play.

Julian Brazier: Will they be capped?

Melanie Johnson: I trust that we will act in accordance with safety. I trust that you and other Members would not want to see

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The Minister must not draw me into this.

Melanie Johnson: The hon. Gentleman and other right hon. and hon. Members would not want to see safety compromised.
	I shall deal with the question of dosage levels. At the end of the day, when the EFSA has opined on what it thinks the right basis should be, there will be negotiations and discussions. There will be work to be done. That process will take a considerable amount of time. We shall be batting for an evidence-based view following the expert group's work, which we and the industry support. That is our position and it will remain our position. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that that will be the basis on which we shall work on this topic.

Tom Levitt: I do not understand the dosage argument. An individual who wanted to take a high dose of a vitamin or mineral could simply take more of the tablets. When an excess is taken of some vitamins and minerals, they are passed out in the water. That seems to be a ridiculous waste of money.

Melanie Johnson: My hon. Friend is right. Nothing will ever stop people taking more of something if they would wish to and they believe that it will do them good. We will not be able to halt that. However, we will be providing the best evidence-based advice on dosage levels, and that is right.

Brian Iddon: My hon. Friend puts her finger on one of the points that has caused me to oppose the directive. When the directive is confirmed and finally introduced, it will drive people to purchase products off the internet. What will the Government do about that? It will drive people to take more tablets to get the same dose. Therefore the directive is pointless. What will the Government do about internet sales, for which consumers will have to pay much higher prices?

Melanie Johnson: The internet is a challenge, and it always poses problems for regulation, as I am sure my hon. Friend is aware. It also provides a route for people to bypass safeguards, and we must consider what measures we can take. It is up to the Government to make sure that the health of the consumer comes first. If people wish to ignore that advice, it is a free country[Hon. Members: Not any more.] It certainly is a free country.

Several hon. Members: rose

Melanie Johnson: I would like to make some progress.
	All parties supported the setting up of the Food Standards Agency, and there was not a Division on the Second Reading of the Bill that established it. It is an independent food safety watchdog with the principles of putting the consumer first, being open and accessible, and operating as an independent voice. It has high credibility as an agency that protects consumers. I therefore hope that Opposition Members are not confusing a challenge to the directive with a challenge to the authority and actions of the FSA.

Several hon. Members: rose

Melanie Johnson: I should like to make progress, or Members will complain that there is not enough time.
	The positive lists can be added to at any time, subject to a dossier being accepted by the EFSA. The aim is to protect consumers as well as open the single market, and consumers will want to be confident about the safety of these products. Indeed, it is in the industry's interests that consumers have that confidencewe saw only too clearly in the BSE tragedy what can happen to an industry if consumers do not have confidence in its products.

Mark Francois: Part of the Government's argument is about wanting to play safe, and the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris) referred to the precautionary principle. Would the Minister explain to the House why that applies to food supplements when the Government have ignored the precautionary principle on mobile phones and will not change the law on masts under 15 m? Why are they in favour of the precautionary principle one day but against it another, after mobile phone companies have given them 22 billion?

Melanie Johnson: Scientists have recently produced another report on mobile phones. We are not here to debate mobile phones, but advice is being studied by the Government, and appears to be in line with previous advice and expert opinion.
	There are still open doors for the industry on dossiers. The EFSA has offered derogation for any dossier received by the deadline. It requires only one dossier to be submitted for each source, and it does not have to be submitted by a UK company or even in the UK. If we know that a dossier has been submitted in another member state we will provide derogation, and that has been made plain to the industry. The EFSA has said that derogation will apply where a slim dossier is provided. On the question of costs, we are happy to accept slim dossiers rather than larger ones. However, I do not think that the demands of producing a dossier are necessarily too great for much of the industry. The problem appears to be a lack of action by the industry and a lack of co-operation between its members. We are not asking for one dossier per companywe require one dossier per source, and it can be submitted in any member state by any company.

Diane Abbott: In response to the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, South-East (Dr. Iddon) about internet sales, my hon. Friend said that it was a free country. Does she accept that some of us did not find that response satisfactory? What on earth is the point of preventing people from purchasing these things in shops, where there is at least a measure of control and supervision, and driving them onto a wholly unregulated internet market? Why is she taking this step without, apparently, introducing any proposals to regulate internet sales?

Melanie Johnson: That is the same kind of argument as saying, for example, that we may as well legalise drugs because we are driving people underground to buy them. [Hon. Members: It is not the same.] Well, it is a parallel argument, which I do not accept.
	In transposing the directive we are acting on Food Standards Agency advice. We must remember that producers are there to serve consumers, and it should be in producers' interest to ensure the safety of consumers. The measure has a more liberalising effect on the EU market. [Laughter.] Many member states have more restrictive regimes than we do. We are spreading the liberal culture more widely across the EU Ultimately the industry will benefit, with the market opening up to allow supplements to be freely traded in member states.

Simon Thomas: Will the Minister give way?

Melanie Johnson: No, I have given way to the hon. Gentleman already.

Peter Luff: Does the Minister understand that the problem is that the quality of the expert advice on which she relies is extremely dubious? When I chaired the Agriculture Committee, we conducted an inquiry into vitamin B6. An apparently robust case for the Government's proposals was demolished by the Committee's investigations. I urge the hon. Lady to reflect that there is a prejudice in the scientific community in favour of conventional science and against things that they do not understand or do not like, or from which they do not indirectly derive any money. I urge her to reflect on the quality of the advice on which she is relying.

Melanie Johnson: Perhaps I have got my history wrong, but I thought that the hon. Gentleman's group recommended a restriction on vitamin B6 as a result of that work.
	The fact that the right hon. Member for Wokingham has placed the expert group on vitamins and minerals on his hit list of the quangos that the Conservatives plan to abolish is a classic case of shooting the messenger. Apparently, he does not like the message, although the industry does.
	I stress again that only one dossier is needed per source, and that dossier can be submitted to any member state. There is no reason why, in a few months, any existing preparation should not continue to be on the market. There is provision for that and it has been in place for three years, so the industry could have acted on it.

Brian Iddon: As this is the first time I have heard the expression slim dossier, will my hon. Friend define it and give us some indication of the cost of producing such a slim dossier?

Melanie Johnson: There are requirements for the dossiers, but we have indicated that anything that we receive which is a reasonable attempt will be counted as a dossier and will be put forward to EFSA. It is also clear that the work that will then go on will include discussion with EFSA about what other information might be needed as part of that work. It can therefore be progressed in that way.

Several hon. Members: rose

Melanie Johnson: No, I want to wrap up and give other Members a chance to join the debate.
	We cannot be complacent. Do we want to be safe, or do we want to be wise after the event and sorry about it?

Roger Gale: Or arrogant?

Melanie Johnson: The hon. Member for North Thanet (Mr. Gale) alleges arrogance. Telling consumers that they can safely go on consuming products about which there is a lack of evidence is arrogance in the extreme.
	The matter used to have all-party support. There was co-operation and working together, which best served consumers and the companies. It is a shame that that historic all-party support has been broken down by the Tories, who seem keen to try to use the issue for their own political ends. I was interested to hear about the website contact on which the hon. Member for New Forest, East (Dr. Lewis) commented.
	We have a clear message, which is to protect consumers. We are proud of that. By acting to produce dossiers the industry can make sure that consumers continue to receive the products. We are happy to continue to work with the industry to try to achieve that in as many cases as possible.

John Pugh: The Lib Dems will support the motion, but it was strange and even sad that although the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) began his speech by talking the language of cross-party consensus, he then, within a few sentences, provoked party differences for polemical reasons. I do not think that that will help the food supplement case at all. [Interruption.] Anyone who wishes to perpetuate such an atmosphere and who does not like a consensus can carry on. We will try to argue the case further without xenophobia, anti-Europeanism, ulterior motives or undue hysteria.
	In most advanced countries, it has been found necessary to regulate the supply, sale and production of foods and medicines. The rationale for that approach is broadly easy to grasp. Both food and medicine are generally good for us, although both have the potential to be toxic at times. Thus, most advanced states, including ours, have regulatory bodies and regulations for foods and medicines. The object of most such regulations is to set minimum safety levels for consumers and patients, and to ensure that people avoid polluted food and quack and dangerous medicines, both of which proliferated in the 19th century. Most of such regulation has the thrust of being fairly minimal in its effects, because at the end of the day, not all the effects of all foods can be known in advance. I learned very recently that the toast that I have been consuming for years is positively dangerous to me. Ultimately, nothing is safe if it is taken in excess quantities, not even water.
	All such regulation is always complicated by the fact that the distinction between food and medicine is as an absolute. Both are usually ingested, but food is nutritional while medicine changes a bodily state and is usually not nutritional. None the less, both are chemical in their effects, and the effects of food are never simply nutritional. Good food contains other beneficent ingredients, including vitamins and minerals, which act on the body and can be separated out as food supplements, and which are, indeed, one of the bones of contention in this debate.
	None the less, the case for regulating what is ingested within any market, whether it is the European or the national market, is fairly strong, broadly speaking. Such regulation is there to provide consumer protection and information, and so inform consumer choice. In a pan-European marketthat is what we have: the single market, as set up by Lady Thatcher in 1986the same case can also be made. I remind hon. Members that there is a debate about supplements and rules about them not only in Europe, but in the United States. Anyone who uses the web and puts the words Save our supplements into the search engine will be guided to an American debate that follows similar parameters to those of the debate that we are having here.
	A similar debate rages overall, but the nub of the issue is how regulation should be done. In passing, I may say that most of the debates of a European nature that we have in this country stem not from recent legislation, but ultimately from the Single European Act. In one sense, the European Union approach is precautionary. It allows nation states to uphold existing bans and sets safety hurdles for existing and new products. Clearly, the objective is relatively simpleto ensure that products of a doubtful provenance or about which individual nations have doubts are not freely traded. As the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell pointed out, however, the approach is not permissive. It does not allow products that individual nations have no doubts about to be consumed in those nations whether they get over the EU international trade hurdles or not.
	The argument against such a permissive approach is very weak. One could sayI suppose that this is a counter-argumentthat tolerated remedies in one nation would easily leak on to the European market anyway, but as other hon. Members have pointed out, there is a far greater danger that unregulated substances of all kinds will get into people's homes via the internet, by international courier or whatever. There also seems to be a backstop in so far as EU regulations, as I understand them, allow individual nations to add their own bans or requirements on top of those regulations. In any case, is it not intrinsically unlikely that what is tried and tested in one country over ages will wreak havoc in another?
	Although many traditional remedies may be ineffective, they represent a kind of forgotten wisdom, which mainstream science sometimes rediscovers at a later date. The history of medicine is littered not only with errors, but with bouts of forgetfulness and remedies that are neglected and forgotten over time. It seems to me that dogmatism in medicine rarely paysa point that is emphasised by the history of herbal medicine. A further argument against discouraging diversity is that that suits the major drug and pharmaceutical companies and suppliers, who work to huge economies of scale, just as it harms small suppliers and producers.
	Not standing up for the principle of national diversity is one of the sins that one can lay against the Government and their approach, but it is only one of their sins, and it may not be their major one. Their major sin was to agree to such an unnecessarily burdensome directive. The Liberal Democrats voted against the directive in Europe, largely because it outlaws 300 nutrients and nutrient sources that are already on the British market, which have had nothing proved against them and do very little harm.
	The directive sets onerous and perhaps unsupportable burdenswe may debate how unsupportable those burdens areand a timetable for listing nutrients. It also ventures into the issue of current dosage without making a fair casea point to which other hon. Members have already alluded. Worse stillmy hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Mr. Williams) made this pointother EU directives threaten to broaden the definition of medicinal products in such a cumbersome way that it may include not only food supplements, but ordinary beverages such as diet cola.
	Food supplements are not an easy area in which to operate, and, at the very least, the Government can be fairly accused of not robustly defending the interests of consumers and health food producers in this country. At the worstthe health industry has made this accusationthe Government have acted shiftily.
	The Liberal Democrats will support the motion as it stands. The save our supplements campaign and the health food industry, which is lobbying so effectively and so hard, should take note that a cross-party consensus exists and it works to the advantage of many. However, the save our supplements campaign has tied itself closely to the Conservative campaign, which necessarily fails to maximise support for a cause that can be rationally, forcefully and fairly argued.

Kate Hoey: I am pleased to be associated with this cross-party motion, although this is an Opposition day. I am also pleased that the Opposition have decided to use the time to debate the matter. If they had not done so, we would not have had a chance to discuss the matter and vote on it in the main Chamber before some of the bans are introduced. I am pleased that the Liberal Democrats support the Opposition motion. I do not know why they have not put their names to it, but I am pleased that they support it, because it is a genuine cross-party motion.
	If there were a free vote today, many of my hon. Friends would support this motion, which is very reasoned. One or two of my hon. Friends attacked me by saying that I am, just helping the Tories. I am not just helping the Toriesindeed, I am not helping the Tories at all. I am speaking on behalf of the millions of people who have been treated shabbily since the House began to consider the measure.
	I was one of the original members of the Statutory Instrument Committee that considered the directive. Being a fairly honest person, I told my Whip that I would vote against it. I was, of course, immediately removed from the Committee, as were a number of other hon. Membersonly three of the eight original Labour members of the Committee remained at its conclusion.
	We ended up in a rather funny situation, with one Member rushing into the Committee at the last minute because he had only just been told that he was on it, and another, who had not got round to telling the Whips that he would vote against, being replaced by my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn), who voted against anyway. Despite all those efforts by the Whips, it went through only by eight votes to six, having already been defeated in the Lords a few weeks before. It is important for people in the country to realise that the means by which a measure goes through the parliamentary procedures are not necessarily very democratic. We now have one last chance to make clear to the Government our view that this matter has not been at all well handled.
	The hon. Members for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) and for Southport (Dr. Pugh) made very good speeches, and I do not want to repeat what they said. I cannot understand how we have got ourselves into this situation. I cannot understand why our Ministers and officials did not stand up more vigorously in Brussels for people who want to be able to continue to use such supplements. I cannot understand why other countries in the European Union manage to secure derogations to get out of doing things, yet we in this country always seem to go along with whatever it is, pretend to put up a bit of a fight, or even do so genuinely, and then lose and give in. We are in a similar position with the directive on working at heights, in that we have ended up saying that something that was intended to apply to the construction industry will apply to mountaineering sports, while other countries have simply ignored it and carried on regardless.
	The food supplements directive is a classic example of the way in which Europe is becoming further and further removed from the ordinary experiences and everyday lives of our citizens. That is why I am looking forward with huge pleasure to the referendum on the constitution, when I hope that we will get much of this debate out into the open.

Kelvin Hopkins: I sympathise strongly with my hon. Friend's remarks, although I will not necessarily vote with her tonight. Would she advise me, as a person who takes a lot of supplements, to look out for the ones that are to be banned and stock up with sufficient supplies for the next few years?

Kate Hoey: That is what people who are aware of what is to happen will do, but many more will do what some of us have already had to do to get certain products that have been banneduse the internet. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) said, that is leading to huge problems. The implications of the regulations have not been thought through. I am holding up a container of one of the supplements that I takepotassium, which is to be banned. That is potty, if I am allowed to use such a word in the Chamber, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

Simon Thomas: The hon. Lady is making a clear and coherent case as to why we should support the motion. As she knows, the name of my hon. Friend the Member for East Carmarthen and Dinefwr (Adam Price) appears alongside her own on the Order Paper in support of the motion. I understand her attitude to Europe, although I somewhat disagree with it. Does she agree that there are two consequences arising from the Government's position? First, whatever position one takes on Europe, the Government, by failing to negotiate on the directive, have helped many people to feel alienated from Europe because certain essentials to their daily lives are being affected by European legislation.
	Secondly, most of the public and consumers do not perceive a great threat from some sort of binge vitamin drinking, yet the Government appear to manufacture that threat and are almost scaremongering. That drives people away from abiding by the regulations to the internet and illegal ways of getting hold of supplies. We shall end up with spam messages about nutritional supplements instead of Viagra.

Kate Hoey: If citizens are to have confidence in the European Union, they need to know that our Government and Ministers are at the forefront, hammering away, and are not prepared to take no for an answer on such an important subject.

Melanie Johnson: I appreciate that my hon. Friend holds a different view on some subjects. However, I hope that she appreciates that I believe that it is a serious matter if she spreads unnecessary anxiety. She mentioned potassium; nine sources of it are already on the positive list. How, therefore, can she justify the remark that she made a moment ago?

Kate Hoey: I can justify it by saying that if I have been used to a specific brand of supplement, I should be entitled to continue to use it until someone has proved to me, publicly and scientifically, that it poses a risk. The Minister has yet to come up with one single nutritional supplement on the banned list that has been proved to be unsafe. We keep asking for proof. All we want is some transparency.

Tom Levitt: Will my hon. Friend give way?

Kate Hoey: Not at the moment.

Tom Levitt: Very briefly?

Kate Hoey: I want to get on and I know that other hon. Members wish to speak.
	Let me read out some brief quotes from people who will be affected by the directive. More and more of those who suffer from myalgic encephalomyelitis find that alternative and complementary medicine is best for them. One person states:
	I have in the past been extremely ill with ME but now fully recovered and am in excellent health. I monitor my state of health very carefully and use a number of natural supplements. I would not only be compromised healthwise if these disappeared from the market I would also be very angry.
	People who use complementary medicine have not suddenly gone out to the nearest health food shop and decided, Oh, I'll try this. They usually think about it carefully. They know what they are doingthey are adults. As other hon. Members have said, it is amazing that we are making it easier to get cannabis and downgrading it and making it easier to go binge drinking, yet the lives of adults who have thought matters through carefully will be made much more difficult.
	Another person who said that they had been diagnosed with cancer nearly two years ago stated:
	The fact that I am still around today, and in healthy condition, is due largely to the regular ingestion of a selection of carefully chosen vitamins, minerals, supplements and herbs, and massive modification to my diet. And no, it wasn't the 'treatment', because I declined it all, except for surgery.
	Again, that person has thought the matter through. Perhaps, as the Minister implied, if such people look carefully, they will find a variation of something that is vaguely similar to what they have been taking. However, why should they, when no one has proved that the original supplement is harmful?
	Another person said:
	For the last 45 years I have been taking very high doses of minerals and vitamins and it has made enormous difference to my health which formerly was not good.
	Another had a four-year-old son who
	suffered severe colic and eczema. Drugs didn't work; supplements did. He can now eat anything except dairy produce. We want to keep him healthy without further burdening the NHS.
	Such comments do not generally come from people who always would oppose the large pharmaceutical companies. An ordinary person states:
	If the Government chooses to put the interests of drug company profits above those of ordinary people like us, they have no right to expect anything from us.

Tom Levitt: Will my hon. Friend give way?

Kate Hoey: I shall give way just to stop you going on in my ear.

Tom Levitt: I thank my hon. Friend for giving way. My intervention is relevant to demonstrate that we are not necessarily speaking in the interests of the big drug companies. In some quarters, potassium is believed to promote humility. People should therefore know that bananas constitute one of greatest natural sources of potassium. Perhaps they could be recommended to people.

Kate Hoey: I am sure that when I need my hon. Friend's expert advice, I will come to him.
	The Minister has said during Health questions that
	the only reason to ban any supplements is, effectively, that they are unsafe . . . and on the basis of evidence.[Official Report, 1 July 2003; Vol. 408, c.161.]
	I repeat: where is the evidence? Can she give us any scientific proof that the products that are to be banned are unsafe? She knows, as do many hon. Members, whether we are sceptical about Europe or very pro-Europe, that this policy is all about harmonisation, and we have ended up losing out because of it.

William Cash: rose

Kate Hoey: I do not want to go down the whole European route now, but I will allow the hon. Gentleman one intervention.

William Cash: I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way. She has no doubt studied the manner in which the European Food Safety Authority operates. The cost of the dossiers can be up to 250,000. Does she agree that one of the problems relating to the so-called period of grace is that, after it comes to an end, even the vitamins submitted in the full safety dossier that are not on the positive list will be banned? I am sure that people will want to know on what basis those nutrients would be added to the positive list in the four weeks during August 2005. That will be the crucial moment.

Kate Hoey: That is important, and I hope that the Minister for Energy and E-Commerce, who will respond to this debate, will try to answer that question.
	I see the hand of the pharmaceutical industry somewhere in all this. It is very good at lobbying and very involved in Brussels, and it is in its interest not to make a diversity of vitamin supplements easily available in health food shops. We should be worried about that. There is no reason, even at this late stage, why the Government should not negotiate some kind of amending directive that would allow member states to permit domestic market production recognised by the Food Standards Agency. If we respect and trust the FSA, why not let it do that job? Those products could then be labelled as safe and appropriate.
	I know that the Whips will be whipping the vote later, but I hope that any of my colleagues who are not prepared to vote for the motion will abstain. By doing so, they would show that they have concerns about this issue. We must send out a message today that, as sensible intelligent citizens, we are not prepared to accept unnecessary regulations from Brussels that force businesses to abandon their products for no good reason, and that stop us having a choice.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Before I call the next speaker, I must point out that a number of hon. Members are seeking to catch my eye, and that time is getting increasingly limited. If Members could make reasonably brief contributions, everyone could well get in; otherwise, I am afraid that some people will be disappointed.

David Tredinnick: The Minister painted a rosy picture of the Government's approach, and of what they have done so far. She talked about companies that favour the regulations and about spreading the liberal culture. She said that nothing would be banned, and mentioned all-party support. I have to say to her that her approach is totally at variance with what is going on in the real world.
	I listened with interest to the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey), who asked why the Government did not get stuck in. Perhaps I can answer that question by relaying the Minister's reply to the parliamentary question that I tabled two weeks ago about whether the Government would use the UK's presidency of the European Union to renegotiate the food supplements directive. She replied:
	It would not be appropriate for discussion on the food supplements directive to be considered . . .
	basically because the Food Standards Agency had
	stated that it had not received representations from other member states.[Official Report, 19 January 2005; Vol. 429, c. 1029W.]
	That is the kind of funk attitude that has brought us to this sorry pass. The Government's approach has been more akin to a moth being attracted to a flame, in that they hovered round the issue for a long time without getting close and, when they did get close, they got burned because they were badly prepared,. That is the truth of the situation.
	The regime in this country has always been less restrictive than that in Europe. What we are supposed to have, through the directive, is a form of harmonisation, not destruction of the playing field as we understand it. For example, we are not expecting to see the destruction of many of the minor manufacturers in the market. When the Minister said that major manufacturers were on side, she neglected to say that many minor manufacturers will simply go out of business and were that will involve the loss of thousands of supplements. The point made by the hon. Member for Vauxhall about potassium is real: although there may be potassium products on the positive list, the fact is that many supplements that are now compounds or part of products and preparations that people in this country have used effectively and safely for many decades will be taken off the market, so people will have to buy a new product that they do not understand. That goes to the heart of the problem.
	As I said in a brief intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), the Government's record in dealing with this issue is poor and borders on negligent. With my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Sir Nicholas Winterton) and one or two others, I took a delegation to the Department of back in 2002. We struggled to get that meeting. Representatives of the manufacturing industry needed to see the Government about the issue, but the only reason why we got the meeting was that Ministers were being held to account the next day, when they were to come before European Standing Committee C. That was on a measure dealing with the authorisation of human and veterinary medicines, and the two Ministers present were obviously not well prepared. I suggest that a much simpler solution for the Government would have been improved labelling.
	The positive list has attracted much comment. In defence of the Government's position, the Minister has tried to persuade the House this afternoon that most of the products that are on the market will be included on the positive list. To return to the point that I made about the remarks of the hon. Member for Vauxhall, the positive list as constituted will not be able to include all the products that are on the market now. Estimates of the number of products that will be taken from the shelves range from 800 upwards. The point made by several colleagues about the costs of that positive list have been ignored by the Minister. The cost of putting in dossiers is astronomical and completely beyond the scope of minor manufacturers. The market will therefore contract. Will the measure benefit larger manufacturers in the drugs industry? Yes, it will, because many of the drug companies have shares in or control the larger suppliers of vitamin supplements, so we will see a reduction in choice and the eradication of smaller companiesand, of course, the consumer will suffer.
	It is amazing that some so-called controversial compounds such as sodium chloride, which is used to kill pests, and caustic soda, which is used to clean drains, are on the positive list, while scores of safe, non-toxic ingredients believed to benefit health are excluded. We have already heard about silicon and boron, which will be banned entirely. Naturally occurring folic acid found in spinach will also be banned, while the form sold by pharmaceutical companies will be allowed. That answers the question about whether major pharmaceutical companies will benefit.
	On the issue of upper safe levels, the Minister has been in danger of misleading the House. I choose my words carefully, because when she said that the European authority responsible for setting those levels had not determined what they should be, she neglected to say that across Europe, excluding the United Kingdom, the policy normally adopted is to have so-called recommended daily allowances. They tend to be lower dosages and are historically set as a result of the influence of the Americans in Europe at the end of the second world war, when the American system was largely brought into Europe. In Britain, we have always worked on the basis of maximum permitted levels. Nutritionists in the field who really know the subject, such as Patrick Holford, will say that those levels are vital for the treatment of certain conditions. The hon. Member for Bolton, South-East (Dr. Iddon) nods in agreement.
	If the Minister accepts recommended daily allowances that will, probably, be forced on her, that will not be in the interests of people in this country and it will be against our tradition. That is why I say to the Minister that I believe she has been tempted into misleading us.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I think that the hon. Gentleman should rephrase the last few words. Will he withdraw that last remark?

David Tredinnick: I am very grateful

Mr. Deputy Speaker: No, no. Will the hon. Gentleman withdraw that last remark?

David Tredinnick: Mr. Deputy Speaker

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Will the hon. Gentleman just withdraw those last few words?

David Tredinnick: Of course.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I thank the hon. Gentleman .

David Tredinnick: I hoped that I had used the word tempted, Mr. Deputy Speaker; but perhaps I did not say that, in which case

Roger Gale: Yes, my hon. Friend did.

David Tredinnick: Did I? Oh, well, there we are. I have been put right by my hon. Friend.

Melanie Johnson: We are arguing very much on the basis of work by the expert group and we are arguing for a UK-formulated response that will consider safety rather than, as it were, daily needs. I assure the hon. Gentleman that we have the best evidence base offered to the EFSA on this subject.

David Tredinnick: I am grateful for that, but I just hope that the hon. Lady prosecutes our country's case with vigour, on the lines suggested by the hon. Member for Vauxhall.
	The problem is that we are being asked to believe the Government when the record is really poor. As I have said, it took appearances by Ministers before Select Committees for there to be any interest at all. When my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Luff) chaired the Select Committee on Agriculturewith great distinctionit had to deal with the vitamin B6 issue. The recommendation from the committee chaired by Lady Daltonnot the Select committee, but a committee that dealt with vitamin B6was comprehensively rejected in the end, and the idea that we should have low levels of the vitamin was thrown out.
	The hon. Member for High Peak (Tom Levitt) said there was no problem with high levels of vitamin B6, because it could always be passed out of the bodybut the input, not the output, is what we should worry about. Less well-off people have to buy many more vitamin supplements, so they represent a tax on poorer people. Of course, they can buy them through the internet now.
	The Government also failed on MLX 249, a document that proposed banning many popular and safe supplements and granting much more authority to the Medicines Control Agency. It proposed that the MCA should act as judge and jury. The hon. Member for Bolton, South-East and I attended a rally in Trafalgar square where thousands of people opposed those proposals. We could hear them chanting Tony, we want the right to choose. That was in 1999, so the issue has been running for a long time.

William Cash: My hon. Friend knows a great deal about this matter. Is he worried about the way in which decisions are reached in the context of the EFSA? It is a scientific body, yetdespite what the Minister just saidit appears that the bottom line is that it is not necessarily possible for the views of the United Kingdom to produce the right results in a body composed of so many different countries.

David Tredinnick: That is the worry about the new European agency: that it will, if I may use an old hunting term, roll the lady over. [Laughter.] I will withdraw that remark, Mr. Deputy Speaker. That makes two. I was trying to say[Laughter.] I see that I am getting into a little difficulty. Perhaps I should move on.
	Following my own mistake, I shall consider a classic one that the Government made concerning kava-kava. They decided to ban it, which was an astonishing decision. All manner of arguments were advanced in Standing Committee as to why it was so dangerous and I had to respond by pointing out that it is the national drink of Tonga. Yet even though it is a nation's national drink, the Government saw fit to ban it.
	In a sense, this debate is academic, because people can now buy what they want over the internet. If our national law is at variance with what people want, they will buy what they want through that method. My hon. Friend the Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan) wrote to me the other day about a company that will go out of business because it will be unable to make such products. He also cited the example of a company that is operating from the Isle of Man through the internet and e-mail, and which will be able to sell products that the Government have banned.
	The Government have been slack, tardy and misguided in their approach to this issue. It is wrong for them to come to this House and claim that everything is rosy, because most people know that a lot of products will soon be removed from the shelves, and that it is all this Government's fault.

Diane Abbott: I am very glad to have the opportunity to speak in support of this measured and modest motion. Of the many issues that we will debate this week and in the weeks to come, this one gives the most cause for public concern, particularly on the part of those who perhaps do not take much interest in formal party politics. I congratulate the supporters of this motion on enabling the House to debate an issue that the public genuinely want debated.
	Ministers need to remember that one of the phenomena of the past decade has been the appearance on the political agenda of health, nutrition and food issues. Indeed, I cannot remember a time when the public were more concerned about such issues. Those of us who are parentsand who perhaps have poor diets ourselvestake a particular interest in nutrition, the amount of preservatives in food and the amount of processed food available, as well as in the lack of access for our poorest communities to fresh, unadulterated food. Such concerns have led to the emergence of an interest in vitamins, minerals and other dietary supplements.
	In the past few months, I have received more letters, e-mails and other communications from the public about this issue than I have about many others. Ministers said that certain Members were spreading concern about it, but in fact the pressure is coming from our constituents, which is why it is important that we have this debate today. It is difficult to explain to them that they face having limited or no access to the vitamins, minerals and supplements on which they depend, when at the same time the Government are trying to introduce 24-hour drinking, despite the well known health effects of alcohol. How can we say that our only concern is to protect health when we are legislating to allow people to drink themselves into a stupor 24 hours a day?
	One consequence of the directive will be to force people to purchase such products on the internet, where there are far fewer controls, inspections and guarantees of product safety. This measure is being advanced more in an effort to satisfy the interests of pharmaceutical companies than to satisfy our constituents' need and desire for access to a wide range of vitamins, minerals and other supplements. I should also point out that people have been taking such products for many years, with no report of ill effects.
	Although I do not share the passionate anti-European views of many Conservativeand, indeed, LabourMembers, I consider myself mildly Eurosceptic. Ministers must consider why public opinion has moved away from Europe since 1997. It is because of matters such as this, which seem minor to Ministers but adversely affect millions of people. The public are aware that Europe intervened in this matter, but it is not clear that Ministers stood up for our people's interests.
	This matter is very important to my constituents and I have heard from many of them in recent weeks and months. The motion is a modest one and I hope that, even at this late stage, the Government will reconsider their position and withdraw their amendment.

Roger Gale: I am delighted to follow the hon. Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) and want to carry on in the same vein. This is not a party political debate. I do not want to score Tory points, or any other points. I am here to speak for my constituents, hundredsif not thousandsof whom use herbal food shops in my area. They buy products that they and their families have used for many years, as the hon. Lady described.
	I intervened on the Minister to suggest that she risked being disingenuous by saying that there was no danger that products would be banned. She seemed to hint that I did not understand the difference between a product and an ingredient, which is like saying that I do not see the difference between an egg and an omelette. One needs ingredients to make a product. Removing access to the ingredients effectively removes access to the product. That is what will happen, although the Minister does not seem to want to understand that.
	It was claimed earlier that vitamin A can kill, and that is true, but so can tea. Tea is a herbal infusion but, like almost anything else taken through the mouth, it can kill if consumed to excess. One would have to drink a heck of a lot of it, but the medical records suggest that people have died from drinking too much tea. Coffee can kill too, as can all sorts of things that we consume. So far, the Ministeror the Government, or Europehas offered no evidence to suggest that the proscribed list under discussion this evening has ever killed anyone.
	No scientific evidence has been offered to support the Government's ludicrous argument that people will buy products that harm them. The hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) said that she had one product that will be banned in her pocket. As a mature adult, she is entitled to choose to use it. The Government's response to the directive is an example of the nanny state rolling over with its paws in the air and allowing its tummy to be rubbed by the nanny superstate.
	In whose interests is the Government's response? The Minister for Public Health said that the directive had been adopted in the interests of public health and safety, but she did not say why the public would be in any way unsafe. It is possible that some of the products used by me, my wife, my family and other hon. Members, for example, do us no good. We may waste lots of money on them, but that is our choice. The products have not killed me and do not appear to have done me any harm.

Stephen Pound: Not physically.

Roger Gale: I believe that some of them do me good, but the hon. Gentleman may need the sort of product that will soon be available at a bar 24 hours a day. That may give him more comfort than my speech.
	One hon. Member with a scientific qualification made the valid point earlier that all these products will be available on the internet. Is it better for me or my constituents to go into Holland and Barrett or Juliet Seeley's emporium in Broadstairs and receive excellent advice from knowledgeable people who understand the range of products that they are sellingin the same way as the Minister and her family would go into a chemist's and take advice on over-the-counter prescription medicinesor to buy on the internet? If the Minister cannot answer that one simple question, she has to concede that there is no benefit in the regulation that she seems hellbent on supporting. It will do more harm than good, and she should be fighting it.

Tom Levitt: Before I commence my remarks, the House may wish to know that I am a biology graduate who taught for 20 years. I regularly taught food and nutrition, and I also have in my constituency a company called Nutri which produces supplements of, I am sure, a high standard and markets them honestly to many people. Like many hon. Members, I was contacted by several hundred constituents the last time this issue arose to express their concerns. By half-past 3 this afternoon, four had chosen to remind me of those concerns prior to this debate.
	I have another admission to make, which is that I do not often read Opposition motions all the way throughbut this one was short and stood some consideration. It talks about the importance of a satisfactory compromisenot language that one often hears from the Opposition. The early-day motion that preceded the motion had a degree of cross-party support, and the motion mentions a desire
	to protect the interests of consumers and manufacturers.
	That is a creditable aim. However, I do not believe that the unilateral repeal of the regulations is possible. The Government motion explains why renegotiation could be dangerous and produce a less satisfactory outcome.
	Moreover, the Opposition motion and the comments from Opposition Members have been ridden with the Euroscepticism that pervades that party. The hon. Member for Reigate (Mr. Blunt) talked about a directive from the ludicrous European Union and the hon. Member for Stone (Mr. Cash) has been delightfully predictable all afternoon in his comments. However, Conservative Members should remember that we are in this situation because of single market regulations approved by this House under a Conservative Government. That is not meant as a political point, but Conservative Members should bear that in mind, because it could be regarded as the source of their problem.
	The negotiations in which representatives of the British Government were involved for many months were long and complex. They involved bringing together 15 nationsat that timewith different rules, regulations, backgrounds and experiences. There was probably less commonality between their experiences on the issue than on many others. They were dedicated to putting a high priority on safety, and the result is pro-choice. However, it is pro informed choice, and that is the important point. As other hon. Members have said, the directive will provide great opportunities for trade in the commodities in question, given the single market experience, for companies such as that based in my constituency.
	It bears repeating that the outcome of the negotiations was welcomed at the time by the Consumers Association, the Health Food Manufacturers Association and others. We are now talking about the implementation of the decisions. Every vitamin that was on sale in this country in 2002 will continue to be on sale. Every mineral for which there is no evidence of harmevidence of safety can be produced in the next few monthswill be on sale until at least 2009. Although a dossier has to be produced, we have heard today that it can be a slim one produced by any company or group of companies in any of the 25 states of the European Union. It is not necessary for every single product produced by every single manufacturer to be represented separately. Every licensed medicinal product is unaffected by the regulations.

Chris Grayling: How does the hon. Gentleman think that each individual company will decide whether it should be the one that submits the dossier for the whole of Europe? How would it decide whether it should take on the cost itself rather than waiting and hoping that another company will do it?

Tom Levitt: I appreciate that commercial issues will be involved. However, organisations, such as the Health Food Manufacturers Association, speak for the industry as a whole, and I hope that there will be European equivalents. If there is openness and we can tell what dossiers have been submitted and if the Government know what dossiers are in the pipeline, it should not be too difficult for companies to make such decisions.
	Six minerals do not yet qualify subject to the evidence of their being safe, but they still could qualify if the dossiers are submitted even prior to the evidence in them being fully taken on board by the European Food Safety Authority. Those minerals are vanadium, tin, cobalt, silicon, boron and nickel. The hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) told the House that vanadium plays a role in fighting diabetes, but I had no knowledge of that. I have taught diet and nutrition and I remember studying invertebrates at A-level and learning that only sea squirts had a biological use for vanadium. They have it in their blood. At that time, there was no other known biological function for vanadium. Similarly tin has no known biological function. Cobalt is included on the list, but it forms part of vitamin B12. Cobalt will obviously not be banned, because vitamin B12 is allowed. Silicon, boron and nickel are trace elements that are required in the diet, but there are no recorded cases of deficiencies in them. They occur naturally in sufficient trace quantities in the diet for them to be effective as trace minerals.

John Pugh: I am a former teacher, so I hope that the hon. Gentleman will not mind me making this point and I am sure that he will be happy to answer me. He used two expressions when he spoke about what needed to be proved about an acceptable mineral or nutrient. He said that they must show no evidence of harm and evidence of safety. Are they the same things? Or once one has proved no evidence of harm, does one then need to prove evidence of safety?

Tom Levitt: The Minister outlined what the dossiers were for and what they would have to prove. I am sure that the detail is much better known by the industry than it is by me.
	The hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell put his finger on what the issue is all about. He talked about people believing that these products did them good. I think that we are talking about an element of faith healing and a placebo effect. I do not criticise or condemn alternative therapies, but healing or health care based on belief rather than scientific evidence is a dangerous path to go down. I am not against people taking supplements, but I am against people making claims for them that cannot be justified.
	In my time, I have had reflexology, and I do not understand how that works. I have had treatment from a chiropractorI do understand how that worksand homeopathy. Some of the elements and minerals that we are talking about occur in such small quantities that we are almost talking homeopathic quantities. Large doses are exactly what people do not want. I was particularly interested in the intervention by the hon. Member for North-West Norfolk (Mr. Bellingham) when he said that he had taken zinc. It clearly galvanised him into actiona scientific joke for the House.
	When many of these products are in the diet to excess, they simply pass through the body and are excreted at the other end. They clearly do not perform a particularly useful function, especially in respect of the fact that people have spent their money on them. However, other products are retained in the body. For example, if carotene is taken in excess as a vitamin, it can cause discolouration of the skin and other well understood effects.
	The people who have the most to gain from greater sales of greater quantities of higher doses of the supplements are the manufacturers. It is like the mustard principle, because the bit left aside that does no goodthe excess consumedgenerates profits for the industry. I am not against people making profits, and more profit will be made when the products are sold to a larger market, which will be possible under the commonality of the rules that will apply throughout the European Union. However, we must ensure that there is no medical risk from the products, which is why the precautionary principle is right, and that we base our recommendations to people on daily doses of vitamins, for example, on well established scientific principles. Although I do not accuse everyone in the field or every supporter of this, an element of mumbo-jumbo is involved in the belief element of the way in which the products work, which can be dangerous in certain circumstances.
	Having considered the Opposition motion, I read the Government amendment. It talks about products being
	safe, properly labelled, and  . . . freely traded.
	It refers to
	as many products as possible,
	and hon. Members should bear in mind that the current list is not exhaustive, or the end of the story. It says that:
	all of the vitamins and most of the minerals currently on sale in the UK will still be available.
	Reopening negotiations would not only lead us down a legally dicey path, but could risk making the effect of the regulations more restrictive, as the amendment says. Having considered the motion and the amendment in great detail, I have no hesitation in plumpingwould you believe it, Mr. Deputy Speakerfor the Government amendment.

William Cash: I declare a past interest because during the 1970s, I was involved in the field of complementary and alternative medicine as a lawyer. In about 1973, the acupuncturists came to see me, and I later discovered that there was a vast amount of discrimination against chiropractors, homeopaths and others in such fields. In those days, it was contrary to the rules of professional ethics of the General Medical Council for a doctor to refer to an osteopath. One can thus gauge the extent of the changes that have taken place, because many doctors today practise therapies that are generally described as complementary medicine. I am sure that most people think that that is beneficial and advantageous. Indeed, if we go back to the time of the Medical Act of 1853I thinkpeople who went on to the medical register, if there was such a thing, had virtually no qualifications of any description, so I think that we have made enormous progress.
	I was slightly worried when the hon. Member for High Peak (Tom Levitt) said that everything would be done in accordance with well established scientific principles. I am an administrative lawyer, among other things, which is why I intervened on the Minister to ask how decisions will be arrived at. When such scientific decisionsthey are well outside my knowledgeare taken, we need to ensure that that is done properly. Nevertheless, there is great prejudice and bias against many aspects of the field, which is reflected by what I discovered regarding osteopaths in the 1970s and what I know from having been extremely closely professionally involved with it for many years, although I am not now.
	In the 1980s, the British Medical Association attempted to ban alternative medicine, and was supported by the medical profession at the time. The response from 150 Members of Parliament put an end to that sort of virulent opposition to complementary and alternative medicine. It seems to me, on the balance of the evidencelooking at the experience of my constituents and of people I know who have benefitedthat a great deal of good has come from alternative medicine.
	Having said that, I ask again: how do the difficult nutrients get on to the positive list? By difficult nutrients, I mean those that are causing disputes between the various parties. That question has not yet been clearly answered. The EFSA has its own procedures and mechanisms and the point that I have been probing, but on which I have not yet received a reply, is that there appears to be a considerable body of opinion among the advisory councils that tends to be less than objective in arriving at decisions. It is important that we know who makes appointments to those bodies, the principles on which they operate, whether they are entirely devoid of conflicts of interest and what decision-making process is used in determining whether a dossier will lead to a ban. I need not enlarge on that point, as I have dealt with it in interventions.
	One point that I do not think has been mentioned in the debateforgive me if it has, Mr. Deputy Speakeris that today the European Court of Justice is to make a decision on the challenge passed to it by the High Court about a year ago. The case raises some important questions. If the Court decides in favour of the Government and decides that the regulations are effective, what would the Opposition be able to do about it if we took a contrary view? On the other hand, what would happen if the decision, based on the arguments advanced in the case, went against the Government and the regulations had to be repealed? The answer to the second question is simple: if the Court decides that a directive and the regulations based on it are defective or ultra vireswhatever grounds it usesaccording to the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality, that is the end of the matter. However, it is not the end of the matter for the UK Parliament, or for the many thousands of people who want their views to be reflected in the repeal of the regulations.
	I was therefore delighted to see the terms of the Conservative motion, because not only does it call for renegotiation of the food supplements directive, but it indicates a willingness to
	repeal the regulations if the renegotiation does not reach a satisfactory compromise to protect the interests of consumers and manufacturers in the United Kingdom.
	We could say the same about fisheries and over-regulation. I would argue that we could say the same about the European treaties, as well. The European Union Bill is to be introduced tomorrow. The question I put to the Prime Minister the other day is: what will he do if there is a no vote in the referendum? Will he return to the issue that is before us? Will he do what is necessary to give effect to the will of the British people as expressed either in a referendum or by a vote in the House? That is the crucial democratic question that faces us all in the House and outside it. It happens to arise, as a matter of principle, under the provisions of the measures that we are discussing in the motion. The issue is whether we are able to repeal the regulations if renegotiation does not reach a satisfactory compromise. The short answer is: yes we can.
	I do not intend and I do not need to go through all the reasons for that. There will be time enough to consider these matters both in respect of the European Union Bill, which will be presented tomorrow, and also the Constitutional Reform Bill, to which I have tabled some amendments, which is to be discussed in a Committee of the whole House next week.
	The fact that we are prepared to state that we would repeal the regulations, if it becomes necessary to do so, is a fundamental constitutional matter that the House, as a whole, must address. It arises, for example, in relation to immigration and asylum. The Minister for Energy and E-Commerce, who is to reply, has a great deal of experience in this area. He knows exactly what I am talking about. There are answers to these questions and there are two bodies of jurisprudence. There is the jurisprudence of the European Court of Justice, which is considering this challenge today. It says, under the case of Costa v. ENEL 1964, that the European Courtthis is endorsed by another case called Simmentahlhas the right to decide the issue of the superiority or supremacy of legislation in terms of its jurisdiction as against the laws and the constitutions of member states.
	On the other hand, we have a tradition, which is based on the fact that Parliament can decide by a subsequent clear and unambiguous enactment passed after the European Communities Act 1972, not only that we canthis is in line with McCarthy's v. Smith involving Lord Denning, and Lord Justice Laws in the Metric Martyrs casemake such provision as we wish but, in addition to that, the judges are under an obligation to give effect to that law as passed by Parliament, providing that it is clear and unambiguous. The Factortame case is based on the 1972 Act and, therefore, is within the general rubric of what I have described.
	We are dealing, perhaps for the first time, with a serious motion that raises the question of the Conservative party being prepared to go down the route of stating on the Floor of the House, in line with what I have been arguing for the past few years, including when I was in my previous position, that it is open to us to be able to repeal or amend legislation that is inconsistent with that which has arisen from the 1972 Act. I do not need to enlarge on that any further. The importance of what we are discussing cannot be underestimated.

Brian Iddon: I have only two or three minutes so I shall make only one point.
	This debate has been raging since I was elected in 1997, starting with vitamin B6, and coming through to where we are today. Whenever I have tabled an early-day motion on this subject or whenever I have participated in a debate on the matter, there has been cross-party liaison.
	I cannot support the motion of the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) for one reason, much as I have sympathy with it. In my view, what the Conservatives are trying to do is practically impossible. This all started with the European elections on 10 June. Until then, the issue went across the parties. On 10 June, the Conservatives decided to bang it on their website and use this issue to recruit people. Ever since then, the Conservatives have made the issue a party political one. Since 10 June, and even before then, early-day motions have been tabled by six Conservative Members, who did not attempt to enlist the support of members of other parties, as I did when I tabled early-day motions on the subject.
	I cannot vote for the motion, because the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell is being party political in the run-up to a general election. I wrote to the Health Food Manufacturers Association, Consumers for Health Choice and other organisations that appeared to support the Conservatives' views during the June elections, to say that I was disappointed by the way in which the Opposition had behaved. They have wrecked the debate.

Howard Stoate: I, too, shall be brief. As Members know, I am the only practising GP in the House, so I have an interest, to say the least, in this issue.
	Many of my patients take supplements, vitamins, minerals, food additives and so on, and, like the significant number of my constituents who have written to me about the issue, they believe that they derive great benefit from them. That has an effect on health care, as some people would rather take over-the-counter supplements and vitamins than trouble their GP, go to casualty or phone NHS Direct. The public therefore regard the majority of vitamins and supplements as a good thingso in that sense I do not oppose their use, as they serve a useful purpose in society. However, that does not mean that there are no problems, and I should like to make a couple of remarks on the subject as a practising GP. The hon. Member for North Thanet (Mr. Gale) pointed out that if supplements were not available over the counter people would resort to the internet. However, the internet is already full of drugs that should not be available in that way. I am sure that, like me, hon. Members are bombarded daily with internet adverts to buy anything from tranquillisers to drugs for erectile dysfunction and dangerous drugs to modify obesity, all of which can have deleterious effects. To say that the internet would be used as a refuge to sell supplements is a mistake, as we already have to deal with the problem. That argument only confuses the issue, and does not clarify it.
	I am worried about the way in which some supplements are taken. They are rarely taken in a standardised form or dose. The scientific evidence on their effectiveness and side effects is often unclear. As a GP, I often suggest to a patient that they take a particular drug to modify their illness and they will ask whether it is all right to take it with the vitamins, minerals and supplements that they are already taking. The simple truth is that I do not have the faintest idea. Up and down the land, patients want to know whether it is all right to take supplements with the drugs that their GPs recommend for heart conditions, diabetes, blood pressure and so on, but we simply do not have the evidence.
	As a scientist and someone who feels strongly that we need scientific research and data to back up the claims that we make, I believe that anything that can improve scientific knowledge about things that people take is for the best. I cannot check drug interactions with supplements and minerals, as there are not any research papers or evidence. I can check on my computer for drug interactions, but they will not show up there; I can check the established medical directories on drug interactions, but they will not be listed there. I simply do not know whether those drugs have a deleterious effect in combination with the drugs that I prescribe. If someone comes back to me with possible side effects, I do not know whether they are caused by the drug that I prescribed or by the interaction between my drug and other things that the patient is taking, and on which I have neither data nor knowledge. It can therefore be hazardous if people take those drugs in a non-standard form, or if they do not know the recommended dose. The House has legitimate concerns about that issue, which should be flagged up.
	Finally, some of those minerals have side effects. I have seen at least two patients in my medical career who had taken high doses of vitamin B6certainly higher than the current recommended maximum doseand had suffered neurological side effects. Fortunately, when those two patients stopped taking vitamin B6  the side effects went away, but at the time there were worrying side effects from the doses that they were taking.
	I do not wish to detain the House any further. I merely point out that there are issues, particularly as regards interactions with other drugs, which need to be considered carefully when the House makes decisions on these matters.

Tim Loughton: We have had a well informed debateanother Conservative-instituted well informed debate on the subject, and we make no apologies for coming back to it. It is an important issue for many millions of our constituents throughout the country. I shall comment on the contributions that we have heard. I begin by welcoming the support given by the Liberal Democrats to the cross-party consensus on the subject. That was helpful.
	As usual, I compliment the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey). Supplements have done her no harm. She looks better than most of us in the House, having dabbled in them, I believe. She emphasised that there is a genuinely cross-party interest. She did not make that excellent speech just to help the Tories. As she said, she should be entitled to use whichever brand of food supplement she has chosen to use, until and unless it is proved unsafe, which has not happened thus far.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Bosworth (Mr. Tredinnick), not surprisingly, made his contribution to the debate. He is known as the hon. Member for South Holland and the Barretts, as we know. He mentioned the effect that the directive would have on minor manufacturers. They will suffer as a result of the level playing field being removed.
	The hon. Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) made an interesting contribution and complimented what she considered a rather modest approach in the motion. I think she would agree with us that if the motion were put to a truly free vote in the House, it would be won. If hon. Members voted as their conscience told them and as their constituents are telling them in large numbers, the motion would be passed. The hon. Lady pointed out that the debate is important because it is about a subject in which many ordinary people are interested, although they are not naturally interested in politics and the political process, so it is right that we should discuss it today.
	My hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Mr. Gale) made the perfectly reasonable assertion that tea can kill, taken out of proportion. One could also drown in it, I suppose, let alone drink the stuff. He asked in the interests of what or whom the regulations are being passed. The hon. Member for High Peak (Tom Levitt) spoke from experience, with his biology background, but he made the curious assertion that the Government had achieved a pro-choice result. In fact, it will limit the choice of many millions of people who want to continue taking the brand to which they are used. His mention of the placebo effect of all these supplements, as he claimed, is more than a little patronising to millions of people who take supplements, believe in them and experience beneficial effects.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr. Cash) spoke in great technical detail. The hon. Member for Bolton, South-East (Dr. Iddon) made the extraordinary assertion that he agrees in principle with the motion and with the issue, but political considerations stand in the way of his voting for it. Finally, the hon. Member for Dartford (Dr. Stoate), with his experience as a GP, alluded to the problems of the internet. Even if he wanted to ban all supplements, they would still appear.
	After the excellent contribution from my hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), there was a truly appalling contribution from the Minister, who failed to answer any questions about the supposed harm caused by the supplements that she is seeking to ban. She made the extraordinary Alice in Wonderland statement that this is a free country. That is not the case, of course, if one wants to continue using one of 5,000 supplements that may not be available after 1 August. She said the Government were spreading the liberal cultureby banning choice. We knew she was in hot water when she ended up on the subject of dodgy dossiers. She was completely sunk at that stage.
	There is cross-party concern. The matter would not be before the House without the high-profile campaign and a great deal of hard work initiated in large part by my hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell. The save our supplements campaign was launched in April last year. The matter affects an estimated 41 per cent. of adults in the UK21 million consumersand an industry worth 335 million. There was a petition that gained more than a million signatures and a postcard campaign, of which all of us, as constituency MPs, have seen evidence. Health food shops in every high street in the country carried posters and took the campaign on board. As my hon. Friend said earlier, this debate comes at a crucial time, with the case before the European Court today.
	I am sure that hon. Members will, like me, have been deluged with e-mails and calls from constituents ahead of today's debate. Let me mention a few that I have received in the past few hours:
	This ban is ridiculous. It is a medical fact that vitamins and minerals form a vital and necessary part of our diet. As modern farming methods involve a large amount of chemicals, these naturally occurring vitamins and minerals become less and less potent.
	Another constituent says:
	They are extremely important to me and my lifestyle, and they are a safe way to stay in shape for my sporting commitments.
	Another says:
	Many people find enormous benefit to their health from supplementation, unlike the many problems caused by the pharmaceutical drugs prescribed widely.
	The representations go on and on; I have received many examples in just the past couple of days.
	If the directive is allowed to go through unchanged and with the full compliance of the British Government, up to 5,000 products could be banned from 1 August this year. As my hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell said, if there is a real fear that items are unsafe, why do the Government not remove them from the shelves now rather than wait until 1 August? What are the dangers? We asked the Minister, but she came back with the absurd contention that we must prove the safety of an item before we have to prove its danger.
	What we do know is the names of the eminent clinicians on the European Commission's scientific committee on food who have prepared the directive. If one looks at some of the individual parts of the directive, one sees that it does not raise specific implications and concerns; it raises possibilities. On the basis of those possibilities, 5,000 products are to disappear from our shelves.

Tim Boswell: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way; I appreciate that he is short of time. Will he share with the House his appreciation of the likely loss of employment both to my constituents and others from what is being done, which is so ill defined and difficult to justify?

Tim Loughton: Absolutely. That is why I said that this was a 335 million industry, so a lot of jobs will be affected, in addition to people who use the products.
	What discussions took place between the Department of Health and the Commission as to the level of supposed risk and whether a full ban is appropriate for this country? How many of the 533,527 people who died in the UK in 2002, as is catalogued on the Department of Health website, died as a result of having too much Solgar's pre-natal nutrient or popping too many folic acid pills? What recorded side effects result from direct consumption of various cocktails or quantities of any of the threatened supplements? The Minister could name none. What risk assessments have been carried out, compared with the benefits that many users, such as my sportsman constituents claim to get? What are the precedents for using the positive lists on which nutrients and nutrient sources must now feature before being permissible? When did we concede the principle that all supplements are guilty until proven innocent?
	The fact is that there is no evidence for this move and no proven danger in a harmless lifestyle choice in which millions of our constituents have opted to indulge for many years, unfettered by Government and allowed the freedom to make their own choices.

Rob Marris: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Tim Loughton: No, as I have very little time.
	The same applied to the kava kava regulations to which my hon. Friend the Member for Bosworth referred. In Committee, we heard that that product was banned on the basis of seven cases over the past 10 or 12 years across the entire world. Not one single liver biopsy could be produced in evidence and the prime suspect was an 86-year-old who died in his sleep and had apparently taken a kava kava pill at some time in the past.
	Consumers are being denied their right to take responsibility for their health by using safe and popular specialist supplements of their choice. The Government have been wholly disingenuous. When the Minister for Crime Reduction, Policing and Community Safety was an Under-Secretary of State for Health, she said:
	We must get the right balance between consumers having freedom of choice and access to a wide range of safe supplements, while making sure, crucially, that we protect public health.[Official Report, 20 January 2003; Vol. 398, c. 100.]
	Where is the choice in this blanket ban? What is the evidence of danger to public health? What is proposed is grossly disproportionate. As the Leader of the House put it, the proposed ban is unnecessary interference. As Sue Croft, director of Consumers for Health Choice, put it:
	The Government are saying one thing to consumers, to industry and to Parliament, while pursuing a quite different course in its negotiations with the EU.
	The Government are being wholly duplicitous. They have the power at least to delay implementation in the UK, or they could use the UK's presidency of the EU to renegotiate the directive, as our motion states, but they refuse to do either of those things.
	Whom does the directive benefit? It does not benefit the 21 million adult users or the supplement industry, which is worth 335 million. What about the big drug companies, which are lining up in favour of the directive as they muscle out the smaller players? As today's Daily Mail puts it:
	There's a clue in the contents of that approved listby and large, vitamins and minerals produced by big drug companies are on it, while ones made by small specialist firms are not.
	The directive panders to this Government's increasing nanny state tendenciesif you can't control it, ban it; if big business does not like it, restrict it; and if Europe does not want it, do not resist and complyfast.
	The real fear is what comes next. The Government's own submission for today's case in the European Court totally reverses the UK Government's position and states that the directive is both proportionate and a good starting point. Spinach contains high levels of naturally occurring folic acid. Surely there is a danger of overdosing on spinach, so the spinach roulade had better come off the new Labour menu. Too many Rice Krispies, which contain extra niacin, vitamin B6 and riboflavin, will make you go snap, crackle and popsurely Rice Krispies should be for the chop.
	Apart from all the problems with imports and the internet, how will the directive be enforced? Can we look forward to a network of secret cells of pregnant women who get together in the dead of night to feed their now illicit habit of popping Solgar pre-natal nutrient tablets? They will have to masquerade as the modern-day equivalent of the now-defunct Tupperware party to foil the possibility of police raidsMrs. Smith from No. 31 stands guard as Mrs. Miggins from No. 57 smuggles in a false-bottomed Ovaltine jar containing Solgar pills, secreted in the lining of her Liberty-print maternity dress. Will we see special flying squads of supplement-busting police lining up alongside police traffic patrols to blood-test drivers for suspiciously high levels of boron in the bloodstream? Will border patrols be stepped up, with cannabis-sniffing dogs retrained to detect traces of evening primrose oil smuggled in illicitly from countries outside the EU?
	The trouble is that the police are too busy preparing to chase people in pink coats on horseback, knocking on doors demanding to search for red marks on children's backsides and arresting dutiful husbands who change a plug socket in their kitchen at the infinitesimal risk of harming themselves. The whole prospect is absurd nonsense, and it would be laughable if the regulations that we are debating today were anything other than a real and imminent threat to the liberty of responsible grown-ups who have chosen to supplement their diets with vitamins and other non-prescription medications, because they believe that those products do more good than harmif people believed otherwise, they would not buy such products.
	There is no problem here that cannot be addressed by better labelling, information about nutrient contents, recommended daily doses and warnings about possible health risks. The directive is a solution looking for a problem, but the problem exists only in the petty, nannying, bureaucratic, Euro-subservient minds of Ministers, who are out of touch with their constituents and what ordinary people choose to do with their own lives, and out of credibility when they discuss freedom and choice. This is dodgy science from a dodgy Government; hon. Members should have none of it and vote for the cross-party motion.

Mike O'Brien: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. [Interruption.] A Conservative Front Bencher says, Answer that, but I am not sure whether the previous speech contained anything of substance worth answering.
	The debate has been interesting, with strong contributions from hon. Members on both sides of the House. My hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Tom Levitt) gave us the benefit of his knowledge of biology and nutrition, which derives from his being a teacher. My hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Dr. Stoate) is a practising GP, and he set out his concerns. My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, South-East (Dr. Iddon) took a different view, but he does not support the Opposition motion.
	My hon. Friends the Members for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) and for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) also took a different view. Some hon. Members on the Eurosceptic wing of the Conservative party contributed, in particular the hon. Member for Stone (Mr. Cash), who made an elegant legal argumentas usual. My neighbour, the hon. Member for Bosworth (Mr. Tredinnick), who has a long interest in the issue, made a strong contribution.
	This is a serious subject for those of us who recognise the importance of issues to do with vitamins and food supplements, and it is sad that the Conservatives are using it as fodder for a cheap party political, pre-election bit of knockabout. Scare stories are being run whereby vulnerable people who rely on various supplements are being told by Conservative political opportunistsand, let me add, by some decent and well-meaning people toothat their vitamin or food supplements will be banned on 1 August, yet for the most part that is not true. In fact, the Conservatives were quite careful in their choice of wordsthey said that these products could or may be banned, raising fears without actually saying that they will be banned.

David Taylor: Many people will be reassured to some extent by my hon. Friend's remarks. However, even if certain supplements may not be banned, is it not the case that later this year the maximum permitted level of certain vitamin and mineral supplements will be set at levels that are significantly lower than those that have become habitual in UK health foods?

Mike O'Brien: If my hon. Friend, who is another neighbour of mine, had been here earlier he would have heard my hon. Friend the Minister for Public Health deal with that very point. We are adopting an evidence-based approach whereby the United Kingdom is submitting evidence to the European Food Safety Agency to consider the issue of maximum dosage. There are no current proposals that that dosage should be reduced. Provisions in the directive allow it to be raised at a later stage, but the straight answer to my hon. Friend is that there is currently no such plan. The Germans have proposed a lower dosage; we are proposing a higher one. We will have to see how that discussion develops in future.

Rob Marris: Will my hon. Friend give way?

Mike O'Brien: I will give way once more, and then I must make progress.

Rob Marris: Is not the problem with the Conservatives, as typified by the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), that they completely reject the spirit of scientific inquiry? He asserted that these substances are harmless, but does not wish to engage in a process to get the evidence to find out whether that be the case. The directive will enable us to get that evidence.

Mike O'Brien: My hon. Friend is right. This is to do with the extent to which we develop consumer protection. We want to do that in a sensible way that not only allows people to have a wide choice in the supplements that they use but reassures them that those products are safe. In respect of products that might fall outside one of the prescribed lists, there is a procedure that can prevent that from happening, at least until 2009, and in many cases, indefinitely.
	We need more facts and less alarmist rhetoric. There are problems with the directivewe have always been clear about that. It was the result of a hard-fought negotiation in which other member states sought a much more restrictive regime but did not get it. We got much of what the industry asked us to get. That is why, when we signed up to the directive, the various trade associations in the vitamins and minerals industry supported our doing so. Their views may have changed since in some cases, but they supported us then.

Chris Grayling: rose

Mike O'Brien: I give way for the last time, as I must make some progress.

Chris Grayling: If the industry supports the directive, why is it spending hundreds of thousands of pounds on challenging it in the European Court as we speak?

Mike O'Brien: The hon. Gentleman was not listening to me. I just said that the views of those in the industry may have changed since the directive was signedthat is a matter for thembut at the time they supported the Government's signing the directive and wanted us to do it. The Government acted in a bona fide way, and we want to continue to work with them to ensure that they can produce the products that their customers want.

Richard Younger-Ross: Will the Minister give way on that point?

Mike O'Brien: No, I want to make progress.
	In the negotiations, we got much of what the industry requested. The directive is sufficiently flexible to ensure that no vitamin or mineral that is currently on sale in British shops must cease to be sold after 1 August. Either the ingredients are on one of the two prescribed lists or a dossier can be submitted that enables them to be assessed as safe by the European Food Safety Agency, in which case they can continue to be on sale until 2009. Provided that they are found to be safe, they can continue to be on sale indefinitely.
	I shall consider the best approach for the industry and consumers shortly. First, let me deal with Conservative claims that we can reopen negotiations or revoke the directive. Conservative Members offer revocation as a false panacea, although I noticed that, when repeatedly pressed by the hon. Member for Stone to commit to revoking the directive, the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) wriggled and writhed out of promising consumers that they would do that. They propose revocation in the motion but failed to say that they would do it when asked by the hon. Member for Stone.
	I invite the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell to intervene and say what he failed to say when he was repeatedly asked to do so earlier. I offer him the opportunity. He will not take it. Why has he tabled a motion that he is not prepared to defend? The answer is cynicism. It may serve the short-term purposes of the Eurosceptic Tory party in the run-up to a general election but it will cost the taxpayer and the consumer dear.
	If we did as the motion suggests, we would be in serious breach of obligations under the European Communities treaties and the Single European Act, to which past Conservative Governments signed up. We would attract infraction proceedings from the European Commission and taxpayers would be likely to be hit by heavy fines. Other member states could also initiate action under article 227 and, ultimately, the UK would be obliged to enforce the directive or take the route that the hon. Member for Stone offers: withdrawal from Europe. Revocation would leave us in a weaker position because we would be unlikely to have submitted the important dossiers to keep the products on the market. Clearly, that would damage the industry in the long term.
	Let me consider the idea of renegotiating the directive. To do that, we would need a qualified majority of member states. The only likely qualified majority at the moment is for a more restrictive directive. The trade associations urged the UK Government to support the directive at the conclusion of the negotiations three years ago because it was clear that we had got as many concessions as we were likely to get. If we pushed any further, things would become much more restrictive.
	The only two countries with a similar market to that of the UK for vitamins and minerals are Ireland and Holland. Neither country has asked to reopen negotiations on the directive. Even if they were reopened, we would be faced with a vast majority of member states that sought a more restrictive outcome, not the more liberal result that the Conservatives promise. We got several concessions in the initial negotiation and Conservatives' proposals would put them at risk. Consumers who rely on the supplements would be at risk because of Conservative policy.
	The concessions include time scales for implementation, the ability to keep products on the market until the EFSA had ruled on them, and the guarantee that the dossier presented by 12 July need not be exhaustive. We also got a substantial lead-in time to enable our industry to present its arguments on vitamins and minerals.
	On the presidency, the Conservatives have left it a bit late to make their requests. The law is effective from 1 August, a month after the start of the UK presidency. The idea that we could renegotiate a complex directive, especially when most member states would want to be more restrictive, in the suggested time scale, is nonsense. The Conservatives are leading the consumer groups, the industry and the electorate up the garden path. That is why I reject the scare stories that Conservatives peddle to appease their Eurosceptic wing. Their motion does not even reflect their policy, for which they are not prepared to stand up.
	Our aim is to ensure that the directive is implemented in a way that allows consumers to continue to use the products that they use now. By contrast, the Conservatives are offering renegotiation with no realistic prospect of success, or the prospect of unilateral revocation, which would be illegal and result in the taxpayer paying fines

Patrick McLoughlin: rose in his place and claimed to move, That the Question be now put.
	Question, That the Question be now put, put and agreed to.

Question put accordingly, That the original words stand part of the Question:
	The House divided: Ayes 189, Noes 283.

Question accordingly negatived.
	Question, That the proposed words be there added, put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 31 (Questions on amendments:)
	The House divided: Ayes 279, Noes 172.

Question accordingly agreed to.
	Mr. deputy Speaker forthwith declared the main Question, as amended, to be agreed to.
	Resolved,
	That this House congratulates the Government on successfully negotiating a final text of the Directive that works in the interests of UK consumers and industry by ensuring that products are safe, properly labelled, and can be freely traded across EU member states; notes that UK legislation gives maximum flexibility that ensures that as many products as possible can continue to be marketed after the Directive comes into effect on 1st August, and that all of the vitamins and most of the minerals currently on sale in the UK will still be available; agrees with the Government's assessment that re-opening discussion on the Directive at this point runs the risk of making its effects more restrictive and is thus against UK interests; and welcomes the Government's continued commitment to working with the industry on assessing the safety of individual food supplements, and to facilitating negotiations with the European Food Standards Agency.

DELEGATED LEGISLATION

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 118(6) (Standing Committees on Delegated Legislation),

Representation of the People

That the draft Parliamentary Constituencies (Scotland) Order 2005, which was laid before this House on 14th December, be approved.[Joan Ryan.]
	Question agreed to.

EUROPEAN COMMUNITY DOCUMENTS

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 119(9) (European Standing Committees),

Optical Radiation Risks

That this House takes note of European Union Document No. 10678/04 and Addendum 1, a draft Directive to protect workers from the effects of optical radiation; and supports the Government's position that the proposed Directive is broadly acceptable and that the Government will work with Member States to secure a Directive that achieves adequate worker protection with minimal burdens on business.[Joan Ryan.]
	Question agreed to.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Ordered,
	That, at the sitting on Wednesday 2nd February 2005, notwithstanding the provisions of Standing Order No. 16 (Proceedings under an Act or on European Union documents), the Speaker shall put the Questions necessary to dispose of proceedings on the Motion in the name of Mr Secretary Clarke relating to Police Grant Report (England and Wales) not later than three hours after their commencement, and shall put the Questions necessary to dispose of proceedings on the Motions in the name of Mr Secretary Prescott relating to Local Government Finance (England) not later than six hours after the commencement of proceedings on the Motion relating to Police Grant Report (England and Wales); proceedings may continue after the moment of interruption; and Standing Order No. 41A (Deferred divisions) shall not apply.[Joan Ryan.]

PETITION
	  
	Health Services (South Buckinghamshire)

Paul Goodman: I wish to present a petition on behalf of more than 10,000 people in south Buckinghamshire against cuts and closures in our local health services.
	The petition states:
	To the House of Commons.
	The Petition of the residents of High Wycombe, Marlow and surrounding areas,
	Declares that the undersigned support the current maternity special care baby unit, children's unit and other services provided at Wycombe General Hospital. The undersigned also object to the proposed closure of the Haleacre unit.
	The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons strongly urge the Secretary of State for Health to do all in his power to retain these services.
	And the Petitioners remain, etc.
	To lie upon the Table.

SUICIDE PROMOTION (INTERNET)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.[Joan Ryan.]

Mark Hendrick: It is an indication of the fast-changing world in the 21st century that I rise to debate a subject that 10 years ago would not have been an issue, because the internet was in its infancy. We live in a digital agean information agethat has revolutionised communications to the huge benefit of mankind. However, all new technological developments, such as nuclear power, genetic engineering and computer technology generally, can be put to bad and evil uses as well as to good ones.
	The internet, chat rooms and e-mail enable people who are thousands of miles apart to communicate with each other at a cost that most people can afford and with a high degree of anonymity. That means that we now live in a society in which our neighbour in the apartment next door may be less well known than someone we converse with in a chat room thousands of miles away. That has dangers as well as advantages.
	In addition, cyberspace has become a powerful medium in which to sell products and services. It does not respect national boundaries or national legislation and, by its very nature, it can conceal the physical location of the source of internet information and, of course, the author of such information. To legislate to regulate and control such an environment is a major challenge if we are to prevent the internet from being misused to damage people's lives and livelihoods.
	The use of the internet to promote suicide is a growing problem. I use the word promote advisedly, because certain websites, written publications, organisations and individuals are encouraging people to commit suicide, for whatever reason. The tragic death of 19-year-old Sarah Cherry in Lancashire late last year is the case that first brought my attention to this tragic phenomenon. Early-day motion 170, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble (Mr. Borrow), highlighted the case of Sarah who, after discussing suicide in an internet chat room, purchased a book from Amazon.com on how to commit suicide and subsequently killed herself. My hon. Friend, in his early-day motion, called for legal action to be taken against those who write, publish or sell material or distribute information on the internet about how to commit suicide. I echo that call.

Lindsay Hoyle: Our regional newspaper, the Lancashire Evening Post, and its campaign Stop the peddlers of death have highlighted this and other tragic cases of suicide. Does my hon. Friend agree that libraries that stock manuals to encourage suicide should remove them from their shelves immediately?

Mark Hendrick: I agree with my hon. Friend. I was about to come to the point he makes about libraries. In fact, Lancashire county libraries have taken the book Final Exit from their shelves. It is the same book that Sarah Cherry acquired from Amazon.com. Although it has been withdrawn from the shelves, Amazon.com has refused calls not to sell it and persists in selling it over the internet.
	Although that case brought the matter to my attention, the problem is more widespread than most people imagineso much so that, as my hon. Friend said, the Lancashire Evening Post has taken it up. The newspaper has raised the matter with local MPs, including myself, the right hon. Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack), whom I am happy to see in the Chamber, and my hon. Friends the Members for Chorley (Mr. Hoyle) and for South Ribble.

Michael Jack: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the publicity that the Lancashire Evening Post afforded the campaign addresses another crucial dimension of the mattermaking parents aware of what their sons and daughters might be up to when using the internet? The internet offers a private method of communication, but if people have it in their nature that suicide is a possibility, does he agree that the more parents who know about the problem through campaigns such as that in the newspaper, the better?

Mark Hendrick: I agree with the right hon. Gentleman. Parents should be made aware of the situation and, as I shall say later, it is important for the Government to do more to make people aware. Internet service providers should consider providing filters to help to tackle the problem, as they do for illegal pornography.

Paul Tyler: The north-west is not the only region that faces the problem. There was a tragic incident in my constituency, as a result of which an organisation called PAPYRUSI think that the hon. Gentleman will be aware of ithas tried to bring together parents who have suffered such tragedies after young people have been affected by information from the internet. I know that there is national concern about the situation, which supports his initiative tonight.

Mark Hendrick: I concur with the hon. Gentleman. I shall cite the organisation to which he referred during my speech.
	I have researched the matter and it is abundantly clear that the Suicide Act 1961 is woefully inadequate to deal with the use of the internet for the promotion of suicide. I say that for the reasons that I have outlined: cyberspace does not respect national boundaries or legislation, and both the physical location and author of a source of information can be concealed.

Tony Cunningham: I hope that my hon. Friend appreciates that 78 hon. Members have signed early-day motion 170, which indicates the tremendous strength of feeling about the matter in the House. When he talks about cyberspace having no limits, does he agree that there are no limits on age? Young people at a vulnerable ageas young as 11, 12 or 13could access the information. It is especially depraved to target such young people.

Mark Hendrick: I agree with my hon. Friend. Neither age nor geographical location is a barrier to accessing the information. The phenomenon can affect people of all backgrounds, nationalities and ages. It is important for the Government to take those points on board when they respond to the debate.
	Wesley J. Smith, a senior fellow at the Discovery institute in Seattle, has done much work on the matter. In an article of 12 June 2003 on www.suicide.com entitled Suicide Advocacy Goes Online, he notes that suicide promotion and facilitation has entered cyberspace and cites an article by Julia Scheeres from the San Francisco Chronicle of 8 June 2003. Wesley J. Smith's article says:
	In 'A Virtual Path to Suicide,' Scheeres demonstrates how indifferent to the value of human life certain segments of our society have grown, and how callous they are when faced with a despairing person wishing to commit suicide. First, they bestow moral permission. Then, they teach the self-destructive person how to do it. Finally, they keep the suicidal person company until the deed is done. It is the modern version of the howling crowd yelling, 'Jump! Jump!' at the suicidal person standing on the skyscraper window ledge.
	This is what happened to 19-year-old Suzy Gonzales. Despite having a full scholarship at Florida State University and a loving family, Gonzales wanted to kill herself. Her suicide was set in motion when she found an Internet site whose participants 'view suicide as a civil right that anyone should be able to exercise, for any reason.' On the site, Scheeres reports, 'Gonzales found people who told her that suicide was an acceptable way to end her despair, and who gave her instructions on how to obtain a lethal dose of potassium cyanide and mix it into a deadly cocktail.' . . . The Hemlock Society
	the USA's largest assisted suicide advocacy group
	has promoted the idea of suicide as the 'ultimate civil right' for years. And, just like the denizens of the Internet site taught Suzy Gonzales how to kill herself, Hemlock publications have long instructed readers how-to-commit suicide while its conventions regularly feature guest speakers who bring their newly invented suicide machines for conventioneers.
	The phenomenon of so-called copycat suicides and suicide pacts is emerging more and more on the internet. In Japan, two men and a woman were victims of a suicide internet website just before the new year. The three young victims, who were not named, suffocated themselves by burning disposable barbecue coals in a car in Mitama in Yamanashi on 30 December. The methodone of the latest to circulate in the suicide internet communityis disturbingly similar to the one used by a Lancashire man in August 2004. He died from carbon monoxide poisoning after suffocating himself by burning disposable barbecue coals.
	Japan has been hit by a series of suicide pacts formed in suicide chat rooms. A fortnight before the death of the three young people in Mitama, four men died in a Tokyo apartment following a suicide pact. Early in 2004 another six people were found dead and nine more fell victim to an internet group suicide in October. According to Japan's police force, a staggering 45 people committed suicide in groups after meeting online between January 2003 and June 2004.
	Suicide pacts have been made over the internet since the late 1990s and have been reported worldwide, from Guam to the Netherlands. Experts say that they tend to occur in cycles, with news of group suicides sparking copycat incidents, which are discussed on websites. On new year's day this year, an e-mailer to the notorious US-based ASHalt.suicide.holidaynewsgroup, where people discuss suicide methods, revealed that a 15-year-old girl had used a method detailed on an associated online list of suicide methods to kill herself.
	The situation is becoming frightening. For example, on the Google search engine, if one types I want to kill myself and hits search, the fourth result brought back is a notorious suicide message board, with long lists of people who are interested in committing suicide. Getting into contact with people that way is perilous, because people cannot be sure to whom they are talking via a message board or in a chat roomparticularly people who are vulnerable and suicidal. There may be contact with a person who gains some form of perverse pleasure from convincing someone that they should kill themselves.
	These cases raise a series of questions about how people should conduct themselves when using the internet and what sort of conduct should be allowable. I shall not stray into human rights, because I do not believe that there is a case to answer in terms of people having the right to commit suicide or to encourage others to do so. The human rights arguments might hold some sway in the United States, where groups claim that they can conduct such activities legally and that they are protected by the first amendment to the American constitution, which relates to freedom of speech, but the same is not true in this country. However, I do have some questions to which I hope the Minister will be able to respond.
	Will my hon. Friend ask himself whether he believes that suicidal people ought to be talking to those who encourage or promote suicide, which could createit might already be creatinga community of people on the web who believe that suicide is acceptable, normal and even, as some claim, a human right? I understand from PAPYRUS, which is an organisation that was set up to prevent young suicides, that suicide sites are not mentioned in any of the Government's relevant publicity material. Nor are suicide sites mentioned in the national suicide strategy for England. What will the Government do to discourage people from accessing suicide sites, and will they encourage people to seek help?
	Would the Government consider setting up a regulatory body to which concerns about websites that may be offensive or harmful can be reported, and pressure the Internet Watch Foundation to act where it can? Should people be guided by the internet service providers to help websites first, before allowing access to suicide methods and information, and how can the Government persuade internet service providers to do that?
	Will the Government consider the case for prohibiting access to suicide sites altogether through filtering? That may hold some technical difficulties for internet service providers but the problem is technically no different from dealing with illegal pornography on the internet. Should it therefore be made a duty of the service provider?
	Is it time to introduce new legislation, as has been done in Australia, that makes it a criminal offence to use the internet to counsel or incite suicide? The legislation there includes a maximum penalty of 110,000 Australian dollars, or 45,000, for an individual. The offences cover the use of a carriage service, including the internet, to access, transmit or make available materials that counsel or incite suicide. It covers also materials that promote and provide instruction on a particular method of suicide. Possession, production or supply of that material is also covered. Will the Government consider incorporating some of the Australian legislation into UK law?
	Finally, will the Government consider actively seeking the co-operation of international police authorities and crime agencies, such as Interpol and Europol, to crack down on these sites?
	I am sure that the so-called peddlers of death can hide behind internet chat rooms and carefully constructed rhetorical arguments that are meant to mask their macabre fantasies, but it is the duty of elected representatives and Government to do everything in their power to pursue, prohibit and prosecute these promoters of suicide, even if the internet environment makes that task more difficult.
	The parents and family of Sarah Cherry deserve no less, as do the families of those who have already been victims of these people and their vile material. There are also those who face difficult lives and need help because of mental illness or suffering who may one day fall prey to this evil.

Paul Goggins: I begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Preston (Mr. Hendrick) on securing this debate on an issue which I know arouses considerable interest. That was evidenced by the fact that a number of hon. Members have contributed to the debate.
	The Government are well aware of the growing concern about suicide websites and chat rooms that can provide information and potential influence over vulnerable young people who may feel encouraged to take their own lives. I hope that my hon. Friend will be reassured that Ministers have already been contacted by PAPYRUS, an organisation that has twice been mentioned this evening. It is a UK charity that is committed to suicide prevention, as part of its wider campaign to raise awareness of the potential dangers of such websites.
	In July last year, my colleague Baroness Scotland, the Minister of State, met members of PAPYRUS and a cross-party delegation of Members to discuss their concerns. My colleague has since corresponded with them about what the Government are doing to try to tackle this complex problem.
	Perhaps I should emphasise at the outset that while my remarks will reflect the complex nature of the law in this area, I have the greatest sympathy for those whose lives and families have been touched by the tragedy of suicide.

Paul Tyler: I was a member of the delegation that met Baroness Scotland. As the Minister has said, it was a useful meeting for those of us who went with PAPYRUS. The point that she made forcefullyI hope that the Minister will acknowledge thisis that this is a classic case of joined-up Government. It has been necessary to deal with a number of problems. The Department for Education and Skills and the Department of Health are clearly the front Departments concerned. I hope that the Minister will acknowledge that there is an important role to be played by a number of Departments if we are to be successful in dealing with the problem.

Paul Goggins: I agree very strongly with the hon. Gentleman, and I shall deal later with the various responsibilities that we all have.
	We have heard from the parents of a number of young people who have killed themselves after visiting such websites. To lose a child in such circumstances is devastating, and it is vital that we do all that we can to raise awareness of the issue and prevent other young people from taking the same course. Of course, the problem is not confined to websites. As the tragic case of Sarah Cherry illustrates, information about suicide and suicide methods is available through other media, including books. Sarah took her own life after buying a book from the internet bookstore Amazon bearing the appalling title, Final Exit: The Practicalities of Self-Deliverance and Assisted Suicide for the Dying. That publication could equally have been obtained through any high street bookstore, but the internet clearly makes it easier than ever before for people to obtain such material.
	I am aware of the concern expressed by the Preston coroner that such books are in circulation. My hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble (Mr. Borrow) has tabled early-day motion 170, which has so far attracted 77 signatures. Many of the concerns about this issue have been directed at the Home Office, which has clear responsibility for the criminal law on assisted suicide as well as for policy on law enforcement relating to hi-tech crime. Other Government Departments also have a role to play. In particular, the Department of Health has responsibility for the Government's suicide prevention strategy, which was published in September 2002 and aims to reduce the death rate from suicide by one fifth by 2010.
	The Department for Education and Skills, through the superhighway safety initiative, provides important advice to teachers, parents and children to reduce the risks of schoolchildren being exposed to inappropriate content and contact via the internet. The Department of Trade and Industry has responsibility for ensuring that the United Kingdom is a market leader in the e-business sector, and that the relevant legislation is conducive to that aim. The Government's clear view is that actions are legal or illegal according to their merits, rather than according to the medium used. What is illegal offline should also be illegal online. While there is not any specific legislation relating solely to the internet, a range of existing UK law covers what online or offline actions constitute an offence, including the Obscene Publications Acts, public order and harassment offences, fraud and copyright offences.

Mark Hendrick: How could existing legislation be used against people who propagate this stuff from another country, not just from England and Wales, to which the Suicide Act 1961 refers?

Paul Goggins: I will come to the Suicide Act in a moment, but my hon. Friend makes an important point. Even if we are successful in closing down websites or removing websites based in the UK that promote such material, it could be accessed from websites in other countries, which poses a substantial challenge. We must therefore work with other Governments and law enforcement agencies where appropriate to deal with the issue. The internet presents us with a global challenge, which we must meet with a global response.
	If an individual in the UK produces material on a suicide website, and in doing so commits an offence, the prosecuting authorities can take action against him and seek the removal of the material. The difficulty is that most material hosted on such sites, although considered distressing and distasteful by the majority, is not necessarily illegal. Suicide itself is not an offence, but section 2(1) of the Suicide Act makes it an offence to aid, abet, counsel or procure another person to commit or attempt suicide. For aiding and abetting to be proved, there must be participation in the act of suicide, as well as a knowledge of what is going to take place. Someone who counsels or procures is liable only for an act of suicide that is committed as a consequence of what he does, so there must be a causal connection between the counselling and procuring and the commission of the act. Establishing that causal link is fundamental to proving that an offence has occurred.
	If an individual helps someone to inject himself with a lethal drug or supplies the lethal drug knowing that it is required for the purpose of committing suicide, they could be charged with aiding and abetting. But simply providing information about suicide does not in itself necessarily amount to aiding, abetting, counselling or procuring, any more than providing information about ways to commit murder would constitute an offence. This is a crucial point. There are many works of reputable fiction which describe criminal activity, or indeed suicide, and thereby give an indication of how to commit the acts. Even though there is no intention to encourage them, they could in reality be the catalyst for someone who was on the brink.
	So the direct causal link must be clearly established, and it is highly unlikely that those producing these websites will participate in specific acts of suicide or know that they are going to take place. Similarly, in terms of counselling and procuring, it would be difficult to establish a causal link between the websites and the commission of actual suicides.
	An example of how this works in practice is the booklet published by the Voluntary Euthanasia Society, which describes the easiest and most painless ways of committing suicide. The court held that an offence would be committed only if the distributor intended that the booklet would be used by someone who was contemplating suicide, and that the individual was in fact assisted or encouraged to do so. Although the content of suicide websites, and books such as the one purchased by Sarah Cherry, may well be considered more objectionable than the Voluntary Euthanasia Society booklet, it seems likely that the same interpretation would apply to those who produce them because, in essence, they are doing the same thinggiving general information about ways to commit suicide.
	In practice, whether an offence is committed would depend not only on the actual content, but on factors such as whether there had been any communication between the authors of the material and the person who wanted to or did commit suicide. If anything, it might be even more difficult to prove than the Voluntary Euthanasia Society case, in which specific individuals were sent copies of booklets on request.
	There may be a greater likelihood of an offence being committed by users of the chat rooms that can be accessed through these websites, rather than those responsible for the sites themselves. For example, if a person asks in a chat room how to commit suicide, is told by someone else how to do it, and does in fact then commit or attempt to commit suicide, that individual may be guilty of aiding, abetting, counselling or procuring the suicide or attempted suicidealthough, as always, that would depend on the circumstances of the case.
	PAPYRUS has asked whether it would be possible to further test the law by bringing a case that would confirm whether the giving of information and general encouragement, whether through a website's actual content or by the user of a chat room accessed through the website, could be held to be aiding, abetting, counselling or procuring. It is, of course, for the courts to interpret the law, but we have drawn the concerns of PAPYRUS and others to the attention of the Attorney-General.
	As I said earlier, it is difficult to see how the law might be amended to prohibit these websites. Even leaving aside freedom of expression issues, it would be a radical departure to make it an offence simply to give general information about something that is not in itself illegal. There might also be unintended consequences for legitimate activitiesfor example, criminalising crime fiction, or even websites that may be seeking to offer help to those who are contemplating suicide.
	In conclusion, there are many things that we must do and that we can do. I chair the taskforce on child protection on the internet, and there are read-across issues there. The Department of Health has a clear role to play. The internet service providers also have a role to play. They have various policies in place to try to provide additional protection in this difficult area. It is complex, there is no quick fix, but the Government are determined to do what they can to prevent this kind of dreadful suicide.
	Question put and agreed to.
	Adjourned accordingly at one minute to Eight o'clock.